Identification of a Promiscuous T-Cell Epitope inMycobacterium tuberculosisMce Proteins

Abstract

The characterization ofMycobacterium tuberculosisantigens inducing CD4⁺T-cell responses could critically contribute to the development of subunit vaccines forM. tuberculosis.Here we performed computational analysis by using T-cell epitope prediction software (known as TEPITOPE) to predict promiscuous HLA-DR ligands in the products of themcegenes ofM. tuberculosis.The analysis of the proliferative responses of CD4⁺T cells from patients with pulmonary tuberculosis to selected peptides displaying promiscuous binding to HLA-DR in vitro led us to the identification of a peptide that induced proliferation of CD4⁺cells from 50% of the tested subjects. This study demonstrates that a systematic computational approach can be used to identify T-cell epitopes in proteins expressed by an intracellular pathogen.