Final Activity Report Summary - XPRIMING AND TMEMORY (Study of the generation of CD8 memory T cells against soluble proteins: A step toward a new vaccine design?) The main goal of this project was to compare CD8+ memory T cells generated by cross-priming to those generated by infection. We have studied immune responses generated after vaccination in the presence of IFNa or by mimicking CD4 T cell help and compared them to responses induced by bacterial or viral infection. We have shown that vaccination generating CD8 T cells by cross priming leads to the generation of efficient memory cells able to protect the hosts. We found no significance differences with CD8 memory T cells generated by infection. Therefore, cross priming could be considered as an efficient mean to generate protective memory in vivo. We also studied the impact of the tissue origin of the dendritic cells and/or the type of signal present during activation of the T cells and showed that nor the tissue origin of the antigen presenting cells nor the type of signal present had any impact on the development of memory cells. This findings strongly suggest that memory cells are flexible and that regardless of the condition of priming they distribute all over the body and acquire both central and effector memory phenotype.
