Fig. 5.

Anti-HIV Pep5 antibody and cellular immune responses in BALB/c mice immunized with ASPPR and HIV Pep5. BALB/c mice were intramuscularly immunized with 20 μg of the synthesized HIV-1 Pep5 (PKVSFEPIPIHYCAPAGFAILKCNNKTFN) and 25 μg of recombinant ASPPR and boosted once 3 weeks later. Mice were immunized with HIV-1 Pep5 with Ov-ASP-1, Pep5 with Alum, Pep5 alone and PBS as control. Upper panel: antibody IgG and isotype in mouse sera. Sera were collected on the third week after the final immunization, and anti-HIV-1 Pep5-specific antibody IgG (Fig. 5A), IgG1 (Fig. 5B), and IgG2a (Fig. 5C) were measured by ELISA and expressed as geometric mean ± SD. Lower panel: ELISPOT assay. Splenocytes from the immunized mice were isolated and stimulated with 10 μg/ml of the specific peptide to observe the specific cellular immune response by counting the spots on the plate of IFNγ (Fig. 5D) and IL-4 (Fig. 5E).