Identification of T- and B-cell epitopes associated with a restricted component of the epstein-barr virus-induced early antigen complex

✍ Scribed by Susan Pothen; Tin Cao; Richard Smith; Paul H. Levine; Alexandra Levine; Gary R. Pearson

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 717 KB
• Volume: 53
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.2910530204

✦ Synopsis

Experiments were designed in an attempt to identify T-and B-cell epitopes expressed on the 17-kDa early-antigen-restricted (EA-R) polypeptide of the EBV-induced early antigen complex. Using Berzofsky's algorithm, 3 hypothetical T-cell epitopes on p I 7 were synthesized and employed in EBV-specific lymphoproliferative assays. Lymphocytes from all EBV-infected donors responded against one of these epitopes (p 17. I) irrespective of their serological status relative to antibodies to EA-R. Both CD4' and CD8+ T-cell subpopulations from seropositive donors proliferated in the presence of p17.1 in short-term cultures. These experiments therefore identified one T-cell epitope on the 17-kDa polypeptide. In contrast, sera from anti-EA antibody-positive individuals reacted with all 3 synthetic peptides to varying degrees, with p 17. I being the most frequently reactive epitope. When the sera were grouped according to diagnosis, it was noted that 82% of the sera from patients with aggressive lymphomas, whether Africans with Burkitt's lymphoma or North Americans with intermediategrade large-cell or high-grade B-cell lymphoma, contained antibody reactive with p17.1, while 64% were reactive with p 17.2 and 29% with p 17.3. In contrast, high anti-EA antibodypositive sera from nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients were relatively less reactive with these synthetic peptides (23% positive with p17.1; 19% with p17.2; and 13% with p17.3). These results therefore identified 3 8-cell EA-R epitopes which might be potentially useful for clinical or epidemiological studies of EBV-associated lymphoproliferative diseases.