Review Article HTLV-1 ORF-I Encoded Proteins and the Regulation of Host Immune Response: Viral Induced Dysregulation of Intracellular Signaling

Copyright © 2015 C. Rosadas and M. Puccioni-Sohler. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is a retrovirus associated with both proliferative and inflammatory disorders. This virus causes a persistent infection, mainly in CD4+ T lymphocyte. The ability to persist in the host is associated with the virus capacity to evade the immune response and to induce infected T-cell proliferation, once the HTLV-1 maintains the infectionmainly by clonal expansion of infected cells.There are several evidences that ORF-I encoded proteins, such as p12 and p8, play an important role in this context. The present study will review the molecular mechanisms that HTLV-1 ORF-I encoded proteins have to induce dysregulation of intracellular signaling, in order to escape from immune response and to increase the infected T-cell proliferation rate. The work will also address the impact of ORF-I mutations on the human host and perspectives in this study field. 1