Simone Lanini, Gina Portella, Francesco Vairo, Gary P Kobinger, Antonio Pesenti, Martin Langer, Soccoh Kabia, Giorgio Brogiato, Jackson Amone, Concetta Castilletti, Rossella Miccio, Alimuddin Zumla, Maria Rosaria Capobianchi, Antonino Di Caro, Gino Strada, Giuseppe Ippolito, INMI-EMERGENCY EBOV Sierra Leone Study group
The identification of the molecular events responsible for strain emergence, enhanced virulence, and epidemicity has been a long-pursued goal in infectious diseases research. A recent analysis of 3,615 genomes of serotype M1 group A
Luchang Zhu, Randall J. Olsen, Waleed Nasser, Stephen B. Beres, Jaana Vuopio, Karl G. Kristinsson, Magnus Gottfredsson, Adeline R. Porter, Frank R. DeLeo, James M. Musser
Chronic infections induce a complex immune response that controls pathogen replication, but also causes pathology due to sustained inflammation. Ca2+ influx mediates T cell function and immunity to infection, and patients with inherited mutations in the gene encoding the Ca2+ channel ORAI1 or its activator stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1) are immunodeficient and prone to chronic infection by various pathogens, including
Ludovic Desvignes, Carl Weidinger, Patrick Shaw, Martin Vaeth, Theo Ribierre, Menghan Liu, Tawania Fergus, Lina Kozhaya, Lauren McVoy, Derya Unutmaz, Joel D. Ernst, Stefan Feske
Toidi Adekambi, Chris C. Ibegbu, Stephanie Cagle, Ameeta S. Kalokhe, Yun F. Wang, Yijuan Hu, Cheryl L. Day, Susan M. Ray, Jyothi Rengarajan
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the most common cause of serious viral bronchiolitis in infants, young children, and the elderly. Currently, there is not an FDA-approved vaccine available for RSV, though the mAb palivizumab is licensed to reduce the incidence of RSV disease in premature or at-risk infants. The palivizumab epitope is a well-characterized, approximately 24-aa helix-loop-helix structure on the RSV fusion (F) protein (F254–277). Here, we genetically inserted this epitope and multiple site variants of this epitope within a versatile woodchuck hepadnavirus core–based virus-like particle (WHcAg-VLP) to generate hybrid VLPs that each bears 240 copies of the RSV epitope in a highly immunogenic arrayed format. A challenge of such an epitope-focused approach is that to be effective, the conformational F254–277 epitope must elicit antibodies that recognize the intact virus. A number of hybrid VLPs containing RSV F254–277 were recognized by palivizumab in vitro and elicited high-titer and protective neutralizing antibody in rodents. Together, the results from this proof-of-principle study suggest that the WHcAg-VLP technology may be an applicable approach to eliciting a response to other structural epitopes.
Jeanne H. Schickli, David C. Whitacre, Roderick S. Tang, Jasmine Kaur, Heather Lawlor, Cory J. Peters, Joyce E. Jones, Darrell L. Peterson, Michael P. McCarthy, Gary Van Nest, David R. Milich
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal prion disease of North American deer and elk and poses an unclear risk for transmission to humans. Human exposure to CWD occurs through hunting activities and consumption of venison from prion-infected animals. Although the amino acid residues of the prion protein (PrP) that prevent or permit human CWD infection are unknown, NMR-based structural studies suggest that the β2-α2 loop (residues 165–175) may impact species barriers. Here we sought to define PrP sequence determinants that affect CWD transmission to humans. We engineered transgenic mice that express human PrP with four amino acid substitutions that result in expression of PrP with a β2-α2 loop (residues 165–175) that exactly matches that of elk PrP. Compared with transgenic mice expressing unaltered human PrP, mice expressing the human-elk chimeric PrP were highly susceptible to elk and deer CWD prions but were concurrently less susceptible to human Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease prions. A systematic in vitro survey of amino acid differences between humans and cervids identified two additional residues that impacted CWD conversion of human PrP. This work identifies amino acids that constitute a substantial structural barrier for CWD transmission to humans and helps illuminate the molecular requirements for cross-species prion transmission.
Timothy D. Kurt, Lin Jiang, Natalia Fernández-Borges, Cyrus Bett, Jun Liu, Tom Yang, Terry R. Spraker, Joaquín Castilla, David Eisenberg, Qingzhong Kong, Christina J. Sigurdson
While 30%–70% of RSV-infected infants develop bronchiolitis, 2% require hospitalization. It is not clear why disease severity differs among healthy, full-term infants; however, virus titers, inflammation, and Th2 bias are proposed explanations. While TLR4 is associated with these disease phenotypes, the role of this receptor in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) pathogenesis is controversial. Here, we evaluated the interaction between TLR4 and environmental factors in RSV disease and defined the immune mediators associated with severe illness. Two independent populations of infants with RSV bronchiolitis revealed that the severity of RSV infection is determined by the
Mauricio T. Caballero, M. Elina Serra, Patricio L. Acosta, Jacqui Marzec, Luz Gibbons, Maximiliano Salim, Andrea Rodriguez, Andrea Reynaldi, Alejandro Garcia, Daniela Bado, Ursula J. Buchholz, Diego R. Hijano, Silvina Coviello, Dawn Newcomb, Miguel Bellabarba, Fausto M. Ferolla, Romina Libster, Ada Berenstein, Susana Siniawaski, Valeria Blumetti, Marcela Echavarria, Leonardo Pinto, Andrea Lawrence, M. Fabiana Ossorio, Arnoldo Grosman, Cecilia G. Mateu, Carola Bayle, Alejandra Dericco, Mariana Pellegrini, Ignacio Igarza, Horacio A. Repetto, Luciano Alva Grimaldi, Prathyusha Gudapati, Norberto R. Polack, Fernando Althabe, Min Shi, Fernando Ferrero, Eduardo Bergel, Renato T. Stein, R. Stokes Peebles, Mark Boothby, Steven R. Kleeberger, Fernando P. Polack
The phagocytosis of apoptotic cells and associated vesicles (efferocytosis) by DCs is an important mechanism for both self tolerance and host defense. Although some of the engulfment ligands involved in efferocytosis have been identified and studied in vitro, the contributions of these ligands in vivo remain ill defined. Here, we determined that during
Fanny Tzelepis, Mark Verway, Jamal Daoud, Joshua Gillard, Kimya Hassani-Ardakani, Jonathan Dunn, Jeffrey Downey, Marilena Elena Gentile, Joanna Jaworska, Anthony Michel Jean Sanchez, Yohann Nédélec, Hojatollah Vali, Maryam Tabrizian, Arnold Scott Kristof, Irah Luther King, Luis Bruno Barreiro, Maziar Divangahi
Ticks are notorious hematophagous ectoparasites and vectors of many deadly pathogens. As an effective vector, ticks must break the strong barrier provided by the skin of their host during feeding, and their saliva contains a complex mixture of bioactive molecules that paralyze host defenses. The receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) mediates immune cell activation at inflammatory sites and is constitutively and highly expressed in skin. Here, we demonstrate that longistatin secreted with saliva of the tick
Anisuzzaman, Takeshi Hatta, Takeharu Miyoshi, Makoto Matsubayashi, M. Khyrul Islam, M. Abdul Alim, M. Abu Anas, M. Mehedi Hasan, Yasunobu Matsumoto, Yasuhiko Yamamoto, Hiroshi Yamamoto, Kozo Fujisaki, Naotoshi Tsuji
Many pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, and protozoan parasites, suppress cellular immune responses through activation of type I IFN signaling. Recent evidence suggests that immune suppression and susceptibility to the malaria parasite,
Ashraful Haque, Shannon E. Best, Marcela Montes de Oca, Kylie R. James, Anne Ammerdorffer, Chelsea L. Edwards, Fabian de Labastida Rivera, Fiona H. Amante, Patrick T. Bunn, Meru Sheel, Ismail Sebina, Motoko Koyama, Antiopi Varelias, Paul J. Hertzog, Ulrich Kalinke, Sin Yee Gun, Laurent Rénia, Christiane Ruedl, Kelli P.A. MacDonald, Geoffrey R. Hill, Christian R. Engwerda
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