Vaccination with dendritic cells pulsed with hepatitis C pseudo particles induces specific immune responses in mice

Figure 3 Antigen specific T-cell responses detected by interferon-gamma enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot test. Immune responses were induced by vaccination of different BALB/c mice with different agents. The two negative control groups were vaccinated with saline or 239T supernatant. The third group were mice vaccinated with hepatitis C virus pseudo particles (HCVpp) only. The treatment groups were mice vaccinated with dendritic cell (DC) prior pulsed with HCVpp with or without lipopolysaccharide (LPS). For detection of specific T-cells, spleenocytes were incubated with HCVpp or pooled overlapping peptides covering the E1 and E2 proteins of the HCV Con1 sequence. Convacalin A (ConA) was used as a positive control. Best results were achieved in the group of mice vaccinated with DC prior pulsed with HCVpp and LPS as an adjuvant. For significance HCVpp groups were compared with DC + HCV + LPS groups. NaCl: Saline; 293T: Cell culture supernatant of 293T-cells; NS: Not significant. Results are shown as mean values of 8 mice each group. ^aP < 0.05, ^bP < 0.001.