The interaction between the transmembrane glycoprotein surface receptor CD40 expressed by skin epithelial cells (ECs) and its T-cell-expressed ligand CD154 was suggested to exacerbate inflammatory skin diseases. However, the full spectrum of CD40-mediated effects by ECs underlying this observation is unknown. Therefore, changes in gene expression after CD40 ligation of ECs were studied by micro...

Both type I interferon (IFN-I) and CD40 play a significant role in various infectious diseases, including malaria and autoimmune disorders. CD40 is mostly known to function in adaptive immunity, but previous observations of elevated CD40 levels early after malaria infection of mice led us to investigate its roles in innate IFN-I responses and disease control. Using a Plasmodium yoelii nigeriens...

Activated Th cells deliver contact-dependent signals to resting B lymphocytes that initiate and drive B cell proliferation. Recently, a ligand for the B lymphocyte membrane protein, CD40, has been identified that delivers contact-dependent Th cell signals to B cells. A dimeric soluble form of CD40 was produced and used to further characterize the regulation of expression of the CD40 ligand. Exp...

Dendrite size and morphology are key determinants of the functional properties of neurons and neural circuits. Here we show that CD40, a member of the TNF receptor superfamily, is a major regulator of dendrite growth and elaboration in the developing brain. The dendrites of hippocampal excitatory neurons were markedly stunted in Cd40-/- mice, whereas those of striatal inhibitory neurons were mu...

It has recently been reported that the CD40-CD40 ligand (CD40L) interaction is important in Th17 development. In addition, transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) promotes tumorigenesis as an immunosuppressive cytokine and is crucial in the development of Th17 cells. This study investigated the role of CD40 in breast cancer cells and its role in immunosuppressive function and tumor progression....

We have previously demonstrated that short interfering RNA (siRNA) is an effective method of gene-specific immune modulation in dendritic cells (DC) (J Immunol 171:691). In this study we investigated the feasibility of generating tolerogenic DC through silencing of CD40, one of the most important costimulatory molecules. Screening of effective siRNA specific to murine CD40 sequence was performe...

CD40 is a member of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor family of cell surface proteins and was originally described as a B cell restricted antigen. Treatment of primary human monocytes with granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interleukin 3 (IL-3), or interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) resulted in the induction of CD40 mRNA and enhancement of cell surface protein expressio...

It has been proposed that the gamma-herpesviruses maintain lifelong latency in B cells by gaining entry into the memory B cell pool and taking advantage of host mechanisms for maintaining these cells. We directly tested this hypothesis by kinetically monitoring viral latency in CD40(+) and CD40(-) B cells from CD40(+)CD40(-) mixed bone marrow chimera mice after infection with a murine gamma-her...