“…A number of epitopes of Tax, the major HTLV-1 oncogenic transactivator protein, have been recognized by HTLV-1-specific CD8 + CTLs in infected individuals carrying HLA-A2, -A11, or -A24 [4–10]. In HLA-A2 + patients, the frequency of Tax-specific CTLs can be as high as 30% of all CD8 + T-cells in the peripheral blood [11] and even higher in CSF[4, 12, 13], with Tax(11-19) epitope being the immunodominant epitope in both asymptomatic carriers [14], ATL [7, 15], and HAM [4, 6, 12, 16–19]. During the development of ATL, general immune suppression has been reportedly due to dysfunction of Tax-specific CTLs [7, 20].…”