The Journal of general virology
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Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a common cause of congenital infection leading to birth defects and a leading cause of serious illness in patients with immunodeficiencies. Studies in this laboratory have focused on a molecular analysis of the immune response to glycoprotein B (gB) of HCMV. This protein has been shown to elicit B cell, helper T cell (Th), and cytotoxic T cell responses, suggesting that it may be useful as a subunit HCMV vaccine. ⋯ In contrast, many of the sera from donors with low gB-specific proliferative responses had gp55-specific antibodies but lacked antibodies to gp93. These results suggest that immunogenetic differences in Th responsiveness to gB may lead to lack of antigen-specific help for antibody responses to gp93 in some cases. The prevalence of these low responder HLA alleles in the population, and the central importance of the T cell response to the generation of antibodies suggest that native gB alone may not be an attractive candidate for an HCMV subunit vaccine.