Patent ID: 7749752

Claim:
A method of identifying an antigen capable of activating cytotoxic T cells, said method comprising generating a HBcAg, HBeAg, Fc, or MAGE expression vector, wherein said vector comprises a polynucleotide comprising a promoter/regulatory sequence, a polynucleotide comprising a signal sequence, a test polynucleotide, a polynucleotide encoding a cell receptor binding domain, and a polynucleotide comprising a polyadenylation signal, wherein each of said polynucleotides are operably linked to each other so as to effect major histocompatability class I or class II bound cell surface expression of a polypeptide encoded by said test polynucleotide on a cell into which said expression vector introduced; introducing said expression vector into an antigen presenting cell to produce a transfected antigen presenting cell; assessing whether any T cell in a population of naive T cells is activated upon contact of said population with said transduced antigen presenting cell, wherein activation of any of said T cells is an indication that said test polynucleotide encodes an antigen capable of activating cytotoxic I cells, thereby identifying said antigen wherein said cell binding domain is a ligand which binds to a cell surface receptor.