Influenza virus causes acute upper and lower respiratory infections and is the most likely, among known pathogens, to cause a large epidemic in humans. Influenza virus mutates rapidly, enabling it to evade natural and vaccine-induced immunity. Furthermore, influenza viruses can cross from animals to humans, generating novel, potentially pandemic strains. Currently available influenza vaccines i...

Standard vaccine technologies based on the induction of antibodies are ineffective in preventing many globally important infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. T cell immunity correlates with the control of many chronic infectious diseases, including HIV in humans and SIV in monkeys. However, inducing persistent T cell immunity has proven difficult, in part due to problems with prolonged avai...

Coxsackievirus A16 (CA16) is a major causative agent of hand, foot, and mouth disease. Immunization with inactivated whole-virus or recombinant virus-like particles (VLP) of CA16 elicits neutralizing antibodies that protect mice against lethal challenge. However, the epitope/s responsible for this induction has not been determined. In this investigation, we identified six neutralizing linear ep...

An important element in melanoma vaccine construction is to identify peptides from melanoma-associated Ags that have immunogenic potential in humans and are recognized by CD8+ T cells in vivo. To identify such peptides, we evaluated HLA-A*02+ melanoma patients immunized to a polyvalent vaccine containing multiple Ags, including MAGE-3, Melan-A/MART-1, gp100, tyrosinase, melanocortin receptor (M...

In tumor transplantation models in mice, cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) are typically the primary effector cells. CTLs recognize major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I-associated peptides expressed by tumors, leading to tumor rejection. Peptides presented by cancer cells can originate from viral proteins, normal self-proteins regulated during differentiation, or altered proteins derived...

Antisera generated against each of seven synthetic peptides corresponding to constant and variable sequences of the pilin from gonococcal strain MS11 were assayed for their ability to crossreact with intact pili from both homologous and heterologous strains. The peptides elicited roughly equal antipeptide responses but varied substantially in their ability to elicit antisera that crossreacted w...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Most group A streptococcal (GAS) vaccine strategies focused on the surface M protein of the GAS. However, vaccine based on M protein have some drawbacks. In the present study, we used two approaches to identify new proteins and peptides that may have utility as vaccine candidates. METHODS A whole gel elution procedure was used to separate GAS surface antigens into 9 si...

Several times during the past two decades, epidemic viral diseases created global challenges. Although many solutions have been proposed to deal with this tight spot, it is still believed that public vaccination represents most effective strategy handle it. So far, various kinds of vaccines including protein subunits, virus-like particles, inactivated, live attenuated, vectors, RNA, and DNA use...