Abstract
The cellular immune response is thought to play a key role in determining a successful outcome to HCV infection. CD8+ T cells are central to this process although the key features of a successful CD8+ T cell response remain to be defined. A cohort of Irish women infected by a single source and defined by common age, gender and ethnicity provides an ideal setting in which to examine the impact of specific HLA Class I restricted CD8+ T cells on virologic outcome. In this cohort a strong association between viral clearance and the HLA Class I allele A*03 is described. We proposed that the mechanism underpinning the protective nature of HLA A*03 was the presentation of key immunodominant epitope(s) to CD8 + T cells. In this study, we used a novel approach combining the use of bio-informatic epitope prediction with a unique set of host and viral genetic data to identify a key protective HLA A*03 restricted epitope.
