Analysis of HCV-specific CD8+ T-cell cytolytic effector functions and their contribution to antiviral efficacy using a novel immunological model

Recently, we developed a novel model for studying HCV immunology (Gastroenterology, 2009). We observed that HCVspecific CD8+ T cells strongly inhibit viral replication through cytolytic and non-cytolytic mechanisms. While the non-cytolytic effects were primarily mediated by IFN-gamma, the mechanisms and the relative contribution of cytolysis to antiviral efficacy were not investigated. To address these important questions, we analyzed HCV-specific CD8+ T cells for their expression of major killing mediators, such as perforin, granzyme B, FasL, and TRAIL. The replicon cells were stained for the expression of deat…