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Copyright © 2012 Selena Viganò et al. Selena Viganò et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The functional avidity is determined by exposing T-cell populations in vitroto different amounts of cognate antigen. T-cells with high functional avidity respond to low antigen doses. This in vitromeasure is thought to correlate well with the in vivoeffector capacity of T-cells. We here present the multifaceted factors determining and influencing the functional avidity of T-cells. We outline how changes in the functional avidity can occur over the course of an infection. This process, known as avidity maturation, can occur despite the fact that T-cells express a fixed TCR. Furthermore, examples are provided illustrating the importance of generating T-cell populations that exhibit a high functional avidity when responding to an infection or tumors. Furthermore, we discuss whether criteria based on which we evaluate an effective T-cell response to acute infections can also be applied to chronic infections such as HIV. Finally, we also focus on observations that high-avidity T-cells show higher signs of exhaustion and facilitate the emergence of virus escape variants. The review summarizes our current understanding of how this may occur as well as how T-cells of different functional avidity contribute to antiviral and anti-tumor immunity. Enhancing our knowledge in this field is relevant for tumor immunotherapy and vaccines design.

Details

Title
Functional Avidity: A Measure to Predict the Efficacy of Effector T Cells?
Author
Viganò, Selena; Utzschneider, Daniel T; Perreau, Matthieu; Pantaleo, Giuseppe; Zehn, Dietmar; Harari, Alexandre
Pages
153863
Publication year
2012
Publication date
2012
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISSN
17402522
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1272131096
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Selena Viganò et al. Selena Viganò et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.