Identification of T-Cell Epitopes and Vaccine Development for African Swine Fever Virus.

Abstract

African swine fever virus (ASFV) has inflicted severe devastation on the global pig industry, yet a globally approved vaccine remains unavailable. Given that cellular immunity is critical for ASFV prevention, the development of vaccines based on T-cell epitopes emerges as a promising strategy to control this virus. This review synthesizes the recent advancements and challenges in the research on ASFV T-cell epitopes, while offering insights into the potential impact of novel T-cell epitope-based vaccines. Notably, only a limited number of ASFV T-cell epitopes have been experimentally identified to date, covering fewer than 20 ASFV proteins. This bottleneck is attributed to challenges such as high swine leukocyte antigen (SLA) polymorphism, suboptimal accuracy of predicting tools, and complex experimental validation procedures. Although current studies on ASFV-specific T-cell immune responses and epitope identification are insufficient to meet vaccine development needs, continuous progress in T-cell immunology research in recent years has brought this goal closer to reality.