Association of Transcriptomic Signatures of Inflammatory Response with Viral Control after Dendritic Cell-Based Therapeutic Vaccination in HIV-1 Infected Individuals

• Main Authors: Csaba Fehér, Roque Pastor-lbáñez, Lorna Leal, Montserrat Plana, Mireia Arnedo, Henk-Jan van den Ham, Arno C. Andeweg, Rob A. Gruters, Francisco Díez-Fuertes, José Alcamí, Patrick Aloy, Felipe García
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-07-01
• Series: Vaccines
• Subjects: dendritic cell-based therapeutic HIV-1 vaccine; differential gene expression; mRNA; miRNA; gene set enrichment analysis
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/7/799
• ISSN: 2076-393X

Systems vaccinology has seldomly been used in therapeutic HIV-1 vaccine research. Our aim was to identify early gene ‘signatures’ that predicted virus load control after analytical therapy interruption (ATI) in participants of a dendritic cell-based HIV-1 vaccine trial (DCV2). mRNA and miRNA were extracted from frozen post-vaccination PBMC samples; gene expression was determined by microarray method. In gene set enrichment analysis, responders showed an up-regulation of 14 gene sets (TNF-alpha/NFkB pathway, inflammatory response, the complement system, Il6 and Il2 JAK-STAT signaling, among others) and a down-regulation of 7 gene sets (such as E2F targets or interferon alpha response). The expression of genes regulated by three (miR-223-3p, miR-1183 and miR-8063) of the 9 differentially expressed miRNAs was significantly down-regulated in responders. The deregulation of certain gene sets related to inflammatory processes seems fundamental for viral control, and certain miRNAs may be important in fine-tuning these processes.