Figure 2.

The validated HBV epitope peptides induced CD8⁺ T cell responses in the in vitro cocultures with patients’ PBMCs. The PBMCs were stimulated with the indicated epitope peptides for 7 days in vitro and followed by IFN-γ intracellular staining and flow cytometry. Totally, 25 epitope peptides were tested using the PBMCs from 19 patients with matching HLA-A alleles. (A) Each epitope peptide induced positive CD8⁺ T cell responses in the PBMCs from one, two or three patients. The frequency of IFN-γ⁺ T cells in CD3⁺/CD8⁺ T cell population for each VEPs and each responded patient was presented as histograms. (B) 13 of the 25 CD8⁺ T cell epitope peptides simultaneously induced CD4⁺ T cell responses. The frequency of IFN-γ⁺ T cells in CD3⁺/CD8^- T cell population for each VEPs and each responded patient was presented as histograms.