{"doi":"10.4049/jimmunol.1900795","title":"MHC-E–Restricted CD8+ T Cells Target Hepatitis B Virus–Infected Human Hepatocytes","abstract":"Abstract Currently 247 million people are living with chronic hepatitis B virus infection (CHB), and the development of novel curative treatments is urgently needed. Immunotherapy is an attractive approach to treat CHB, yet therapeutic approaches to augment the endogenous hepatitis B virus (HBV)–specific T cell response in CHB patients have demonstrated little success. In this study, we show that strain 68-1 rhesus macaque (RM) CMV vaccine vectors expressing HBV Ags engender HBV-specific CD8+ T cells unconventionally restricted by MHC class II and the nonclassical MHC-E molecule in RM. Surface staining of human donor and RM primary hepatocytes (PH) ex vivo revealed the majority of PH expressed MHC-E but not MHC class II. HBV-specific, MHC-E–restricted CD8+ T cells from RM vaccinated with RM CMV vaccine vectors expressing HBV Ags recognized HBV-infected PH from both human donor and RM. These results provide proof-of-concept that MHC-E–restricted CD8+ T cells could be harnessed for the treatment of CHB, either through therapeutic vaccination or adoptive immunotherapy.","journal":"The Journal of Immunology","year":2020,"id":103012,"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":25,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9553,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":503759,"name":"Patrick K Hashiguchi","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":502596,"name":"Mandana Mansouri","orcid":"0000-0003-1299-0817","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":502597,"name":"Christine Meyer","orcid":"0009-0006-7683-9664","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":388810,"name":"Roxanne M. Gilbride","orcid":"0000-0001-6040-104X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":502598,"name":"Sreya Biswas","orcid":"0000-0003-4832-5544","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":502599,"name":"Jennie Womack","orcid":"0000-0002-4941-3696","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":346193,"name":"Jason S. Reed","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":259643,"name":"Helen L. Wu","orcid":"0000-0001-7101-5160","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":263668,"name":"Michael K. Axthelm","orcid":"0000-0002-1984-5906","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":263667,"name":"Scott G. Hansen","orcid":"0000-0002-9845-6481","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":246463,"name":"Louis J. Picker","orcid":"0000-0003-0546-398X","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":474083,"name":"Klaus Früh","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":259654,"name":"Jonah B. Sacha","orcid":"0000-0002-7633-3122","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":385191,"name":"Benjamin J. Burwitz","orcid":"0000-0001-7767-022X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T22:42:17.920911Z","pmid":"32161099","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":[]}