{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0268370","title":"Design and validation of HIV peptide pools for detection of HIV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells","abstract":"Reagents to monitor T cell responses to the entire HIV genome, based on well characterized epitopes, are missing. Evaluation of HIV-specific T cell responses is of importance to study natural infection, and therapeutic and vaccine interventions. Experimentally derived CD4+ and CD8+ HIV epitopes from the HIV molecular immunology database were developed into Class I and Class II HIV megapools (MPs). We assessed HIV responses in persons with HIV pre antiretroviral therapy (ART) (n = 17) and post-ART (n = 18) and compared these responses to 15 controls without HIV (matched by sex at birth, age, and ethnicity). Using the Activation Induced Marker (AIM) assay, we quantified HIV-specific total CD4+, memory CD4+, circulating T follicular helper, total CD8+ and memory CD8+ T cells. We also compared the Class I and Class II HIV MPs to commercially available HIV gag peptide pools. Overall, HIV Class II MP detected HIV-specific CD4+ T cells in 21/35 (60%) HIV positive samples and 0/15 HIV negative samples. HIV Class I MP detected an HIV-specific CD8+ T cells in 17/35 (48.6%) HIV positive samples and 0/15 HIV negative samples. Our innovative HIV MPs are reflective of the entire HIV genome, and its performance is comparable to other commercially available peptide pools. Here, we detected HIV-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses in people on and off ART, but not in people without HIV.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2022,"id":282580,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":7,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9103,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":292649,"name":"Alba Grifoni","orcid":"0000-0002-2209-5966","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":103780,"name":"Shane Crotty","orcid":"0000-0002-6484-6262","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":55670,"name":"Alessandro Sette","orcid":"0000-0001-7013-2250","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":240305,"name":"Sara Gianella","orcid":"0000-0002-9927-0849","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":103769,"name":"Jennifer M. Dan","orcid":"0000-0002-1672-0657","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":561440,"name":"Rita Al-Kolla","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":35,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:29:19.691592Z","pmid":"35972938","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}