FIG 5.

Binding affinity and ELISPOT assay reactivity of 5 Nef hot spot ligands. PBMCs from 23 HLA-A*11:01, HIV-1-infected patients were tested by ELISPOT assay for reactivity to HIV-1-derived ligands recovered from the HLAs of infected cells. (A) The data compare the binding affinity (IC₅₀, nM) of each Nef hot spot ligand. (B) The data demonstrate that 15 of 23 patients responded to at least 1 of the 5 overlapping Nef hot spot ligands. Filled circles, a response with a mean magnitude of >300 SFU per million cells; open circles, a patient response of <300 SFU per million cells. The cutoff of 300 SFU per million cells was selected since the top one-third of all ligands recovered from infected cells responded at this level or higher. (C) For reference, a heat map demonstrating all 23 patients' HIV-1 status and breadth of response to each of the 42 ligands is shown. The 5 ligands recovered from the HLA of infected cells that are also reported by LANL to be HLA-A*11:01-associated CTL epitopes are highlighted in green.