In this study, we co-administered Ad-HIV and MVA-HIV, either as a mixture or separately, to mice, and we noticed a suppression of HIV-specific effector CD8 T cell immune responses, by both the tetramer assay and ICS. However, the co-administration increased the proportion of HIV-specific memory CD8 T cells. In vitro experiments indicated that the two replication-deficient viral vectors suppressed the transgene expressions via soluble factor(s) secreted by virus-infected cells. These results show that co-administration of the two viral vaccines results in diverse immune responses, compared to the administration of the vaccine alone or the prime-boost

regimen. selleck chemicals llc Traditional vaccination usually uses the same vaccine for prime-boost vaccination (e.g., polio, BCG, and measles vaccines). A recent study suggests that a single vaccine may not elicit an immune response enough to protect against HIV infection. Therefore, the prime-boost regimen with diverse vaccines has

been explored in animal models and has been found to greatly improve immune response [6] and [26]. In current clinical trials, the Ad and MVA vectors were found to have high immunogenicity. Our group and other researchers found that the Ad prime-MVA boost regimen is one of the best MEK activation immune approaches [6] and [26]. For the convenience of clinical use, we explored HIV-specific immune responses induced by co-administering the two vaccines. Surprisingly, co-vaccination did not increase the antigen-specific immune

responses, but further suppressed the responses, detected by a single epitope or the HIV Env peptide pool (Fig. 1). Further study showed that suppression was also effected by mock viral vectors, including humoral immune response (Fig. 2). One explanation is that numerous effector T cells against viral proteins and the HIV gene have been elicited after co-administration, and the Rolziracetam relative percentage of effector CD8 T cells against limited epitopes has subsequently decreased. MVA, differing from vaccinia virus, does not express TNFα, IFNα/β, and IFNγ cytokine receptor homologs, resulting MVA-induced mature DCs produce cytokines such as IFNα without inhibition from cytokine receptor homologs [27] and [28]. Hodge et al. reported that MVA priming-fowlpox vector boosting at same injection site within 7 days induced higher immune response against fowlpox vector expressing gene than boosting within 30 days or boosting at other injection site, which may result from activation of innate immunity by MVA [29]. One explanation of the difference between our results and theirs is that different boosting timing (simultaneous and 7 days late). It has been known that recombinant virus vector will be exhausted within 2 weeks, most of them within 1 week after in vivo administration [30]. The boosting vector may be less affected by soluble factor(s) secreted by MVA.