ABSTRACT
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in immunization approaches that seek to generate protective immunity through effector T cell induction. An improved capacity to induce such T cells would facilitate the development of vaccines against a variety of intracellular pathogens including malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis, three of the most important infectious diseases of the developing world. Also, a capacity to induce high-level persistent T cell responses could revolutionize the field of therapeutic vaccines and allow the development of immunotherapeutics for persistent viral infections such as hepatitis C virus and HIV and malignancies such as melanoma and breast cancer. Although vaccination studies aimed at inducing cellular immunity have often focused on CD8+ cytotoxic T cells as the main effector cells, it is becoming clear that CD4+ effector T cells may be of value in several diseases.
