vaccines Article Activation-Induce Markers Detect Vaccine-Specific CD4+ T cell Responses Not Measured by Assays Conventionally Used in Clinical Trials Georgina Bowyer * ID , Tommy Rampling ID , Jonathan Powlson ID , Richard Morter ID , Daniel Wright, Adrian V.S. Hill and Katie J. Ewer ID The Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7DQ, UK;
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[email protected] (K.J.E.) * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +44-1865-617-646 Received: 25 June 2018; Accepted: 30 July 2018; Published: 31 July 2018 Abstract: Immunogenicity of T cell-inducing vaccines, such as viral vectors or DNA vaccines and Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), are frequently assessed by cytokine-based approaches. While these are sensitive methods that have shown correlates of protection in various vaccine studies, they only identify a small proportion of the vaccine-specific T cell response. Responses to vaccination are likely to be heterogeneous, particularly when comparing prime and boost or assessing vaccine performance across diverse populations. Activation-induced markers (AIM) can provide a broader view of the total antigen-specific T cell response to enable a more comprehensive evaluation of vaccine immunogenicity. We tested an AIM assay for the detection of vaccine-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses in healthy UK adults vaccinated with viral vectored Ebola vaccine candidates, ChAd3-EBO-Z and MVA-EBO-Z.