One person’s fight against an HIV infection can decrease the virus’s ability to threaten its next victim, say Goepfert et al. (page 1009). Mutations that help the virus survive in one host decrease its ability to replicate in the next. HIV mutations that help the virus bypass the host’s immune system often fall within gag. This gene is a favorite target for mutations because, for some reason, G...

Tumor vaccine design requires prediction and validation of immunogenic MHC class I epitopes expressed by target cells as well as MHC class II epitopes expressed by antigen-presenting cells essential for the induction of optimal immune responses. Epitope prediction methods are based on different algorithms and are instrumental for a first screening of possible epitopes. However, their results do...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a leading cause of chronic liver disease, including chronic hepatitis, fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Hepatitis C infection associates with lipid and lipoprotein metabolism disorders such as hepatic steatosis, hypobetalipoproteinemia, and hypocholesterolemia. Furthermore, virus production is dependent on hepatic very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) ...

Xenograft recipients produce large amounts of high-affinity anti-Gal IgG in response to Galalpha1-3Galbeta1- 4GlcNAc-R (alpha-gal) epitopes on the graft. In contrast, ABO-mismatched allograft recipients undergo "accommodation," a state of very weak immune response to ABO antigens. These differences in anti-carbohydrate immune response were studied in alpha1,3galactosyltransferase knock-out mice...

Brucellosis, produced by Brucella species, is a disease that causes severe economic losses for livestock farms worldwide Due to serious economic and medical consequences of this disease, many efforts have been made to prevent the infection through the use of recombinant vaccines based on Brucella outer membrane protein (OMP) antigens. In the present study, a wide range of on-line prediction sof...

Background B cell epitopes corresponding to interaction zones between proteins and immune system are a mean to explore intrinsic features of proteins linked to allergenicity. The project PREDEXPITOPE was funded by the French National Research Agency to develop a bioinformatics strategy for prediction of B cell epitopes of allergens. The objective was to distinguish epitopic from non epitopic ar...

This paper focuses on the development of candidate DNA vaccine encoding antigenic epitopes of type O foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV). A series of plasmids encoding different combinations of B cell epitopes and a T cell epitope were constructed and characterized by inoculating BALB/c mice. The specific antibodies were only detectable in the mice inoculated with plasmids encoding the T cell e...

C3H (H-2(k)) mice are susceptible to a vaginal challenge with human strains of Chlamydia trachomatis and thus are a useful strain for testing potential Chlamydia vaccine candidates. However, C3H mice are fairly poor responders in terms of the level of antibody resulting from immunization with potential protective peptides representing variable domains (VDs) of the major outer membrane protein (...

Viruses are locked into an adaptive arms race with the host immune system: the immune system adapts to recognize the virus, the virus adapts to evade the immune system, the cycle repeats. But in the case of HIV, it seems, sometimes it’s good to be recognized. The cellular branch of the immune system comprises T cells that recognize specific short peptides (epitopes) clipped from viral proteins ...