Immune pressure results in mutation of DRIP derived epitope in SIV

Hello Welcome to the first edition of the Tumor Immunology Round Table podcast. In this edition I present you an very interesting and novel finding recently published in Journal of Experimental Medicine by Maness et al: the immune system induces the mutation by the SIV of an DRIP (defective ribosomal product) that is immunogenic and induces strong dominant responses in monkeys infected with SIV. The DRIP derives from a alternative reading frame of the gene env. The mutation specifically target the immunogenic peptide presented my the rhesus macaques haplotype mamu-B*17, as it doesn't affect the env sequence (sinonimous mutation). The mutation renders the peptide with much lower affinity than the wild type peptide and therefore the virus escape the immunological control. That's a great example of immunological editing of virus and the conclusions can be easily extrapolated to cancer immune editing.