Inhibition of antigen-specific CD8+ T cell proliferation using peptide pools- Possible mechanisms

Studying T cell proliferation in response to peptide pool stimulation is an important readout in vaccine development and epitope discovery studies. We have shown that increased concentration as well as number of peptides per pool inhibits the proliferation of antigen-specific CD8 T cells (GASL, 2008). Understanding the possible mechanisms underlying this would help improving the methodological limitations of using peptide pools. The main objective of this study was to examine whether the cytotoxicity of antigen-specific CD8 T cells and the proliferation of high affinity T cells were affected by peptide pools. PB…