Critical Role of Perforin-dependent CD8+ T Cell Immunity for Rapid Protective Vaccination in a Murine Model for Human Smallpox

Kremer, Melanie; Suezer, Yasemin; Volz, Asisa; Frenz, Theresa; Majzoub, Monir; Hanschmann, Kay-Martin; Lehmann, Michael H.; Kalinke, Ulrich; Sutter, Gerd

Vaccinia virus (VACV) is one of the most successful vaccines in human medicine. Vaccination of live VACV provided efficient protection against human smallpox, resulting in worldwide eradication of this devastating infectious disease [11] . Today, the development of new VACV vaccines is important due to the increasing emergence of zoonotic diseases caused by orthopoxviruses [12] , and the potential misuse of these viruses as agents of bioterrorism [13] . One promising VACV vaccine candidate is based on the highly attenuated virus strain modified VACV Ankara (MVA) [14] [15] [16] . MVA has also been developed as a nonreplicating viral vector to construct experimental recombinant vaccines against various infectious diseases [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] . Immunizations with MVA in animal models proved highly efficacious when compared to conventional VACV vaccines, and elicited antigenspecific humoral and cellular immune responses [19, [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] .