Functional avidity: a measure to predict the efficacy of effector T cells?
- Viganò S Divisions of Immunology and Allergy, Department of Medicine, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
- Utzschneider DT
- Perreau M
- Pantaleo G
- Zehn D
- Harari A
- 2012-12-11
Published in:
- Clinical & developmental immunology. - 2012
English
The functional avidity is determined by exposing T-cell populations in vitro to different amounts of cognate antigen. T-cells with high functional avidity respond to low antigen doses. This in vitro measure is thought to correlate well with the in vivo effector capacity of T-cells. We here present the multifaceted factors determining and influencing the functional avidity of T-cells. We outline how changes in the functional avidity can occur over the course of an infection. This process, known as avidity maturation, can occur despite the fact that T-cells express a fixed TCR. Furthermore, examples are provided illustrating the importance of generating T-cell populations that exhibit a high functional avidity when responding to an infection or tumors. Furthermore, we discuss whether criteria based on which we evaluate an effective T-cell response to acute infections can also be applied to chronic infections such as HIV. Finally, we also focus on observations that high-avidity T-cells show higher signs of exhaustion and facilitate the emergence of virus escape variants. The review summarizes our current understanding of how this may occur as well as how T-cells of different functional avidity contribute to antiviral and anti-tumor immunity. Enhancing our knowledge in this field is relevant for tumor immunotherapy and vaccines design.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- gold
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1155/2012/153863
- PMID 23227083
- Persistent URL
- https://sonar.ch/global/documents/261783
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