Towards a Rational Design of an Asymptomatic Clinical Herpes Vaccine: The Old, the New, and the Unknown
Figure 1
The majority of ocular herpes vaccines are injected parenterally, and although they induced strong systemic immune responses, they failed to generate significant local immune responses either in the eye or in trigeminal ganglia (TG). Local immune responses at these sites are likely needed to prevent virus transmission and to reduce virus replication, which should eventually reduce viral latency/reactivation and limit the severity of ocular herpes. Several results from our lab strongly suggest that there is linear association between presence of “asymptomatic” CD8+ T cells (bleu circles) in the TG and ocular mucosal immune system with the lack of eye disease. In contrast, the absence of asymptomatic CD8+ T cells and presence of symptomatic CD8+ T cells (red circles) may increase the rate of HSV reactivation and pathology. The upper panel shows scenario of an asymptomatic HSV-1 infection and the lower panel shows symptomatic HSV-1 infection and eye disease.
