Heat shock proteins 60 (HSP60) is one of the most well studied member of the HSP family. Although found to be a target self antigen in pathological autoimmunity and HSP60-reactive T and B cells are part of immune responses in several infectious diseases, there is consistent experimental evidence that HSP60 displays dominant immunoregulatory properties. There are a series of reports on animal mo...

Nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice develop insulitis and diabetes through a process involving autoimmunity to the 60-kDa heat shock protein (HSP60). Treatment of NOD mice with HSP60 or with peptides derived from HSP60 inhibits this diabetogenic process. We now report that NOD diabetes can be inhibited by vaccination with a DNA construct encoding human HSP60, with the pcDNA3 empty vector, or with an o...

Adjuvant arthritis (AA) is an autoimmune disease inducible in rats involving T cell reactivity to the mycobacterial 65-kDa heat shock protein (HSP65). HSP65-specific T cells cross-reactive with the mammalian 60-kDa heat shock protein (HSP60) are thought to participate in the modulation of AA. In this work we studied the effects on AA of DNA vaccination using constructs coding for HSP65 (pHSP65)...

OBJECTIVE The relationship between pregnancy outcome and expression of the heat shock proteins (hsps) or hsp-antibody complexes of 60kD (hsp60), 70kD (hsp70), and 90kD (hsp90) in placental tissue and circulating antibodies to hsps was evaluated. METHOD Expression of hsp60, hsp70, and hsp90 in placentae from 12 women with preterm birth, eight with intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), and 10...

Chlamydia pneumoniae infection has been associated with asthma. It has also been suggested that heat shock protein 60 (Hsp60) belonging to a class of highly conserved proteins may play a role in the pathogenesis of chlamydial infections. The purpose was to study whether the host immune response to C. pneumoniae Hsp60 is associated with asthma and decreased pulmonary function. An enzyme immunoas...

BACKGROUND Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a family of proteins with immunogenic and proinflammatory properties. Human and Chlamydia pneumoniae (Cp) HSP60 were found in patients with stable coronary disease. METHODS AND RESULTS We measured the levels of anti-Cp-HSP60 and anti-Cp immunoglobulin G (IgG) in 179 patients with unstable angina, 40 with acute myocardial infarction, and 40 with stable...

OBJECTIVE Vaccination based on tumor antigen is an attractive strategy for cancer prevention and therapy. Cervical cancer is highly associated with human papillomavirus, especially type 16. We developed DNA vaccines encoding heat shock protein 60 (HSP60) linked to HPV16 E6 or E7 to test if HSP60 chimeric DNA vaccines may generate strong E6 and/or E7-specific immune response and anti-tumor effec...

The yeast mitochondrial chaperonin Hsp60 has previously been implicated in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) transactions: it is found in mtDNA nucleoids associated with single-stranded DNA; it binds preferentially to the template strand of active mtDNA ori sequences in vitro; and wild-type (rho+) mtDNA is unstable in hsp60 temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants grown at the permissive temperature. Here we...

Circulating heat shock protein 60 (Hsp60) and heat shock protein 10 (Hsp10) have been associated with pro- and anti-inflammatory activity, respectively. To determine whether these heat shock proteins might be associated with the immune activation seen in HIV-infected patients, the plasma levels of Hsp60 and Hsp10 were determined in a cohort of 20 HIV-infected patients before and after effective...

Chlamydia pneumoniae is a common respiratory pathogen worldwide. It does not only cause acute respiratory infections, but is also associated with chronic inflammatory diseases, such as asthma and coronary heart disease (CHD). Chlamydial heat shock protein 60 (Hsp60) is associated with the development of immunopathological damage following C. trachomatis infections, but the role of Hsp60 in C. p...