The human gamma-herpesviruses, EBV and Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, are widely disseminated and are associated with the onset of a variety of malignancies. Thus, the development of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccination strategies is an important goal. The experimental mouse gamma-herpesvirus, gammaHV68 (or MHV-68), has provided an in vivo model for studying immune control of thes...

Vaccines are considered by many to be one of the most successful medical interventions against infectious diseases. But many significant obstacles remain, such as optimizing DNA vaccines for use in humans or large animals. The amount of doses, route and easiness of administration are also important points to consider in the design of new DNA vaccines. Heterologous prime-boost regimens probably ...

A novel approach for development of a meningococcal group B vaccine has been developed. This approach , which uses vesicles or blebs of the meningococcal outer membrane prepared without exposure to detergent or denaturing solvents, allows the outer membrane antigens to be presented to the immune system in their natural conformation and membrane environment. Two strategies for using these native...

A variety of DNA vaccine prime and recombinant viral boost immunization strategies have been developed to enhance immune responses in humans, but inherent limitations to these strategies exist. There is still an overwhelming need to develop safe and effective approaches that raise broad humoral and T cell-mediated immune responses systemically and on mucosal surfaces. We have developed a novel ...

Induction of specific humoral and cellular immunity in the lung airways is proposed to be critical for vaccine protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb). To facilitate airway delivery and antigen targeting to the antigen presenting cells in the alveoli, we employed mannosylated chitosan (MCS) to formulate a multi-T-epitope DNA vaccine, pPES, as an intranasal TB vaccine. MCS-DNA nano...

PURPOSE The main purpose of vaccination is to generate immunological memory providing enhanced immune responses against infectious pathogens. The standard and most commonly used assay for influenza vaccine immunogenicity evaluation is a hemagglutination inhibition assay (HAI). It is clear now that HAI assay is unable to properly assess the proven protective immunity elicited by live attenuated ...

Induction of long-term tolerance to β-cell autoantigens has been investigated both in animal models and in human type 1 diabetes (T1D) in order to prevent the disease. As regards external compounds, the dietary plant protein fraction has been associated with high penetrance of the disease, whereas gluten-free diets prevent T1D in animal models. Herewith we investigated whether intranasal (i.n.)...

The possible bioterrorism threat using the variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox, has promoted us to further investigate the immunogenicity profiles of existing vaccines. Here, we study for the first time the immunogenicity profile of a replication-competent smallpox vaccine (vaccinia Tiantan, VTT strain) for inducing neutralizing antibodies (Nabs) through mucosal vaccination, which is...

While recent studies have demonstrated that DNA vaccination induces potent CD8+ T cell memory in vivo, it is unclear whether this memory is qualitatively and quantitatively comparable with that induced by natural viral infection. In the current studies, we have investigated the induction of CD8+ memory CTL responses to Sendai virus nucleoprotein (NP) in C57BL/6 mice following gene gun vaccinati...