3rd International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment Rio de Janeiro - July 24 - 27, 2005

AN EXTREMELY COMMON MAJOR HISTOCOMPATIBILITY COMPLEX CLASS I ALLELE IN MAURITIAN CYNOMOLGUS MACAQUES

IAS Conf HIV Pathog Treat 2005 Jul 24-27;3rd: Abstract No. TuOa0105

Krebs K., Rudersdorf R., Jin Z., OConnor D.
University of Wisconsin at Madison, Madison, United States of America

INTRODUCTION: Nonhuman primate models are crucial to the design and evaluation of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccines. Though Rhesus macaques have been used in more vaccine trials than all other nonhuman primate species combined, their continued use is jeopardized by limited animal availability. Therefore, we are evaluating the suitability of Mauritian Cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis) as an alternate nonhuman primate model for AIDS. Mauritian macaques likely descend from a small founder population introduced to the island of Mauritius within the last 600 years. Therefore, we hypothesize that these animals are more likely to share major histocompatibility class I (MHC-I) alleles than Asian Cynomolgus and Rhesus macaques. Nothing is currently known about major histocompatibility class I (MHC-I) alleles in this population.

METHODS: MHC class I alleles from 8 Mauritian Cynomolgus macaques were cloned and sequenced. We are developing rapid tests to genotype additional Mauritian Cynomolgus macaques for those alleles found in more than one of the eight animals.

RESULTS: We identified 17 novel MHC-I alleles in our preliminary screen of 8 animals. 4 of these alleles were exceptionally common (5 of the 8 animals). Genotyping by reference-strand mediated conformational analysis verified the presence of at least 1 of these alleles, Mafa-B*27, in 64% of a 22 animal cohort. We are currently developing genotyping tools for the other common MHC-I alleles and expanding our testing to include nearly 50 Mauritian Cynomolgus macaques.

CONCLUSIONS: These studies will lay the foundation for the use of Mauritian Cynomolgus macaques in AIDS vaccine studies that elicit CD8+ T cell responses. The HIV and SIV research communities stand to benefit considerably from the availability and reduced genetic diversity of Mauritian Cynomolgus macaques.

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Basic | TuOa0105 | David OConnor
13.8 562 13.8 Animal models

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