Figure 1.

Study design and experimental timeline. Thirty-two Mamu-B*08+ RMs were recruited for this study. Animals were distributed into vaccinated (n = 16) and unvaccinated (n = 16) groups of equal size (A). One group was vaccinated with a heterologous prime-boost-boost regimen of different viral vectors encoding vif and nef minigenes as shown in (B). Both groups were then subjected to intrarectal challenges with a marginal infectious dose of SIVmac239 (10 TCID₅₀ for challenges 1-12, 50 TCID₅₀ for challenges 13-19, and 250 TCID₅₀ for challenge 20) once every two weeks. Once an animal became infected, it no longer received additional intrarectal challenges, meaning that most animals received fewer than the maximum 20 challenges. The graphic in panel A was created using BioRender.com.