Identification of the epitopes on HCV core protein recognized by HLA-A2 restricted cytotoxic T lymphocytes

Table 1 HLA-A and serology of patients studied for CTL response to HCV epitopes

Subjects	HLA-A	Anti-HCV	HCV-RNA
Experiment
Li	A2A31	+	+
Zhang	A2A11	+	+
Tang	A2A33	+	+
Zhang	A2A11	+	+
Patient control
Li	A11	+	+
+	A3A33	+
Health control
Zheng	A2A11	-	-
Wang	A2A24	-	-

Note: All subjects received no treatment and had been followed-up for one year.

Table 2 Predicted results of epitopes recognized by HLA-A2 re-stricted CTL on HCV C protein

No	Peptide sequence	Peptide site	Score
①	YLLPRRGPRL	35-44	144
②	NLGKVIDTL	118-126	576
③	TLTCGFADL	125-133	144
④	DLMGYIPLV	132-140	576
⑤	ALAHGVRAL	150-158	576
⑥	NLPGCSFSIFL	168-176	288
⑦	FLLALLSCL	177-185	144

A: Reported epitopes recognized by HLA-A2.1 restricted CTL; B: Almost consistent with the reported epitope LLALLSCLTV (core 178-187)

Table 3 CTL activity induced by predicted peptides on HCV C protein

Subject	HLA type				51Cr-release (%lysis)
	A		B		①	②	④	⑤
Experiment
Li	2	31	51	16	-2.6	9.6	0.5	NT
Zhang	2	11	8	27	0.4	NT	2.4	6.9
Tang	2	33	44	55	-3.8	5.1	3.3	37.5
Zhang	2	11	62	35	-1.1	9.8	8.4	12.2
Healthy control
Zheng	2	11	62	39	-2.9	8.0	6.8	-0.2
Wang	2	24	61	46	0.2	NT	3.7	10.0
Patient control
Li	11		62	35	-2.6	2.6	2.3	-1.8
Zhu	3	33	17	35	-2.5	1.6	0	2.5

CTL activity induced by peptides at E/T ratio of 50:1; NT: No test; ①, ②, ④ and ⑤ represent YLLPRRGPRL (core 35-44), NLGKVIDTL (core 118-126), DLMGYIPLV (core 132-140) and ALAHGVRAL (core 150-158), respectively.