Background: Tegument protein pp150 of cytomegaloviruses (CMVs) plays a vital role in all stages of viral life cycle, representing the most important tegument protein candidate for HCMV treatment. However, the exact role of pp150 in immune regulation is yet to be elucidated. Objective: To examine the effects of pp150 on the maturity and function of muri...

Dendritic cells (DCs) induce pathogen-specific T cell responses. We comprehensively studied the effects of addition of maturation stimulus, fibroblasts (fibroblast conditioned medium), PHA activated T cells (T cell conditioned medium), and mixture of fibroblast & PHA activated T cells (FCM-TCCM) conditioned media on maturation of DCs. Monocytes were cultured with GM-CSF and IL-4 for five days. ...

Augmenting immunogenicity by genetically modifying tumor cells to express costimulatory molecules has proven to be a promising therapeutic strategy in murine tumor models and is currently under investigation in human clinical trials for metastatic cancer. However, there are significant technical and logistic problems associated with implementing strategies requiring direct gene modification of ...

The CD28 ligands CD80 and CD86 are expressed on APC, and both provide costimulatory function. However, the reason for the expression of two separate CD28 ligands remains unclear. We have previously shown that blockade of CD80 costimulation by Y100F-Ig, a CTL-associated Ag-4 (CTLA4)-Ig mutant that does not bind CD86, inhibits the development of lung inflammatory immune responses, but does not af...

Blockade of costimulatory signals is a promising therapeutic target to prevent allograft rejection. In this study, we sought to characterize to what extent CTLA-4 engagement contributes to the development of transplantation tolerance under the cover of CD40/CD40L and CD28/CD86 blockade. In vitro, we found that inhibition of the primary alloresponse and induction of alloantigen hyporesponsivenes...

BACKGROUND Costimulation blockade with antibodies directed against human CD40 and CD86 leads to prolonged kidney allograft survival in rhesus monkeys, but fails to induce permanent graft acceptance. We have tested whether costimulation blockade is more effective after peripheral T-cell ablation with antithymocyte globulin (ATG), with the aim to remove already primed autoreactive cells present i...

Although extremely rare, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are divisible into subsets that differ with respect to differentiation potential and cell surface marker expression. For example, we recently found that CD86(-) CD150(+) CD48(-) HSCs have limited potential for lymphocyte production. This could be an important new tool for studying hematological abnormalities. Here, we analyzed HSC subsets...

CD26 is a T cell costimulatory molecule with dipeptidyl peptidase IV activity in its extracellular region. We previously reported that recombinant soluble CD26 enhanced T cell proliferation induced by the recall antigen tetanus toxoid (TT). However, the mechanism involved in this enhancement is not yet elucidated. We now demonstrate that CD26 binds Caveolin-1 on antigen-presenting cells, and th...

Chemotherapeutic resistance remains a significant hurdle in the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM) and is significantly mediated by interactions between MM cells and stromal cells of the bone marrow microenvironment. Despite the importance of these interactions, the specific molecules and downstream signaling components involved remain incompletely understood. We have previously shown that the ...