The promising results of clinical trials using immune checkpoint inhibitors revived interests in cancer immunotherapy. However, it also became apparent that efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade can benefit from combining it with immunostimulatory strategies. Here, we review prior and re-emerging approaches using Toll-like Receptor 9 (TLR9) agonists, CpG oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs), focused o...

Streptococcus pneumoniae (the pneumococcus) causes a major upper respiratory tract infection often leading to severe illness and death in the elderly. Thus, it is important to induce safe and effective mucosal immunity against this pathogen in order to prevent pnuemocaccal infection. However, this is a very difficult task to elicit protective mucosal IgA antibody responses in older individuals....

Bacterial DNA and the synthetic CpG-oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) derived thereof have attracted attention because they activate cells of the adaptive immune system (lymphocytes) and the innate immune system (macrophages). They induce a Th1 biased immune response upon activation of the immune cells. In this paper we addressed whether unmethylated phosphorothioated CpG ODN (for example 1826 CpG-O...

When mitoxantrone is activated by formaldehyde it can form adducts with DNA. These occur preferentially at CpG and CpA sequences and are enhanced 2-3-fold at methylated CpG sequences compared with non-methylated sites. We sought to understand the molecular factors involved in enhanced adduct formation at these methylated sites. This required, first, clarification of factors that contributed to ...

Objective(s)CpG oligodeoxynucleotides (CpG ODNs) have been shown to have potent immunostimulatory adjuvant activity for a wide range of antigens. Due to susceptibility of phosphodiester CpG ODNs (PO CpG) to nuclease degradation, nuclease-resistant phosphorothioate CpG ODNs (PS CpG) were currently utilized in an in vivo model. In this study, according to some recently reported drawbacks with PS ...

Background Unmethylated CpG-DNA is a potent ligand for the endosomal Toll-like-receptor-9, important immune activation to pathogen-associated molecules. 1 CpG and other TLR-ligands show effective immunotherapeutic capacities in cancer treatment by inducing an antitumorigenic immunity. 2 They are able reduce tumor progression reduction of intratumoral secretion immunoregulating chemokine CCL22 3...

We have previously demonstrated that the immune response to an unmethylated cytidine-guanosine (CpG)-containing oligonucleotide (ODN) is greatly enhanced when encapsulated in a lipid nanoparticle (LN-CpG ODN). In this study, the pharmacokinetics, biodistribution and cellular uptake of LN-CpG ODN following intravenous (i.v.) and subcutaneous (s.c.) administration was characterized and correlated...