The relationship between expression of cell surface glycoproteins encoded by the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and immunogenicity of a recently obtained spontaneous murine mammary adenocarcinoma (designated CBA.SP1) was examined. Immunogenic and nonimmunogenic variant clones were isolated from a subclone of the parent tumor after treatment with the mutagen N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosogu...

Chimeric peptides comprising B- and T-helper cell epitopes from the proteins of infectious agents represent immunogens with potential for use as new vaccines. However, it has become clear that the orientation of the epitopes, the presence of spacer residues and the number of copies of the epitopes influence the specificity, levels and affinity of the antibody produced following immunization wit...

BACKGROUND Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play a significant role in the fragmentation of myelin basic protein (MBP) and demyelination leading to autoimmune multiple sclerosis (MS) and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). The classic MBP isoforms are predominantly expressed in the oligodendrocytes of the CNS. The splice variants of the single MBP gene (Golli-MBP BG21 and J37) are ...

The development of prophylactic vaccines against pathogenic bacteria is a major objective of the World Health Organisation. However, vaccine development is often hindered by antigenic diversity and the difficulties encountered manufacturing immunogenic membrane proteins. Here, we employed structure-based design as a strategy to develop Chimeric Antigens (ChAs) for subunit vaccines. ChAs were ge...

It is generally believed that most tumor antigens are passively released from either health or dying tumor cells as intact soluble antigens, peptide fragments complexed with heat shock proteins (HSPs), or packaged in secretary vesicles in the form of microparticles or exosomes. The passive release of tumor antigens is generally non-inflammatory and non-immunogenic; however, results from others ...

Background An important question pertaining to glycoproteins is whether the covalently-bound carbohydrate moieties contribute to its immunogenic activity. Ovomucoid (OM) is, for these kinds of studies, a model compound in view of its relatively high carbohydrate content but the role of the carbohydrate moieties on its immunogenic activity still remains controversial. The aim of this study was t...