A recombinant vaccinia virus expressing herpes simplex virus type 1 glycoprotein B induces cytotoxic T lymphocytes in mice.

Spleen cells from BALB/c (H-2d) mice vaccinated with vgB11, a recombinant vaccinia virus which expresses glycoprotein B (gB) of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), lysed EMT6 (H-2d) target cells infected with vgB11 or with HSV-1 but did not lyse uninfected EMT6 cells or infected L-929 (H-2k) target cells. Unlabelled target cell competition of lysis showed that only syngeneic cells infected with vgB11 or HSV-1 inhibited lysis of radiolabelled HSV-1-infected targets. These results demonstrate that vgB11 induces H-2-restricted anti-HSV-1 cytotoxic T lymphocytes and that gB is the target antigen.