Disease-Stage Variance in Functional CD4+ T-Cell Responses Against Novel Pan-Human Leukocyte Antigen-D Region Presented Human Papillomavirus-16 E7 Epitopes

Abstract
Given the anticipated clinical importance of helper and regulatory CD4+ T cells reactive against human papillomavirus-16 E7 in the cervical carcinoma setting, we performed this study to identify novel E7-derived T helper (Th) epitopes and to characterize functional anti-E7 Th responses in normal donors and patients with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia I-III or cervical cancer.