Natural HIV control may rely on sequence of T cell receptor protein
Monday, June 11, 2012 - 16:30
in Biology & Nature
The rare ability of some individuals to control HIV infection with their immune system alone appears to depend – at least partially – on specific qualities of the immune system's killer T cells and not on how many of those cells are produced. In a Nature Immunology paper that has received advance online publication, researchers at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard report that – even among individuals sharing a protective version of an important immune system molecule – the ability of HIV-specific killer T cells to control viral replication appears to depend on the particular sequence of the protein that recognizes HIV infected cells.