Short communicationEvaluation of the efficacy of a therapeutic HIV vaccine by in vitro stimulation assay

- HIV infected individuals sourced PBMCs were used in this study.
- The evaluation was based on in vitro experiment.
- It is a straightforward and time-efficient method for evaluating vaccines.
- Ad5-HIVgag vaccine can stimulate HIV-specific PBMCs in HIV infected individuals.

A novel method for HIV vaccine efficacy evaluation was established and the experimental conditions optimized. This novel method was then applied to determine whether a recombinant adenovirus type 5 HIV therapeutic vaccine expressing Gag antigen (Ad5-HIVgag) could stimulate HIV-specific cellular responses in vitro. The results indicated that HIV-specific IFN-gama production lymphocytes were induced by the Ad5-HIVgag vaccine. Compared with other methods, this in vitro stimulation method is safe and time-efficient, and the result is more intuitive. It has the potential to be regarded as a supplement to other methods for evaluating the IFN-gamma production by PBMCs to HIV vaccination.