Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4) blockade can induce tumor regression and improved survival in cancer patients. This treatment can enhance adaptive immune responses without an exogenous vaccine, but the immunologic biomarkers associated with improved clinical outcome in cancer patients are not fully established. A phase Ib trial in patients with metastatic, castration-resist...

The majority of thymically arised regulatory CD4+CD25high T cells (Treg) show high affinity to self-antigens. It has been proposed that T-cell receptors (TCR) on Treg cells in the periphery also recognize foreign-antigens from pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses. Studies in mice have shown that peripheral Treg cells can be generated not only from naïve T cells but also from effector T cells...

We investigated the role of Smad4, a signaling molecule of the TGF-beta pathway, in T cells on the pathology of Sjögren's syndrome (SS) in nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice, an animal model of SS. T cell-specific Smad4-deleted (Smad4fl/fl,CD4-Cre; Smad4 tKO) NOD mice had accelerated development of SS compared with wild-type (Smad4+/+,CD4-Cre; WT) NOD mice, including increased lymphocyte infiltration...

Traditional cereal-based foods usually include wheat flour in their formulations; however, the search for new products with new ingredients providing different properties to foods is widely pursued by food companies. Replacement of wheat by other flours can modify both nutritional properties and organoleptic characteristics of the final baked food, but can also impact the formation of potential...

Regulatory T (Treg) cells have a critical role in the control of immunity, and their diverse subpopulations may allow adaptation to different types of immune responses. In this study, we analyzed human Treg cell subpopulations in the peripheral blood by performing genome-wide expression profiling of 40 Treg cell subsets from healthy donors. We found that the human peripheral blood Treg cell pop...

Monte Carlo simulations of the field substellar mass function (MF) are presented, based on the latest brown dwarf evolutionary models from Burrows et al. (1997) and Baraffe et al. (2003). Starting from various representations of the MF below 0.1 M⊙ and the stellar birth rate, luminosity functions (LFs) and Teff distributions are produced for comparison with observed samples. These distributions...

TLR play essential roles in the initiation and modulation of immune responses. TLR1/TLR2 heterodimers recognize triacylated bacterial lipopeptides, including the synthetic TLR1/2 lipopeptide Pam3CSK4. Genetic variation in TLR1 is associated with outcomes in diseases in which regulatory T cells (Treg) play a role, including asthma and allergy. To determine whether genetic polymorphisms in TLR1 a...

The present study further characterizes the cellular mechanisms involved in the in vivo rejection of MHC class I-disparate skin allografts. Previously, we demonstrated that class I-specific rejection responses could result from collaborations between distinct populations of lymphokine-secreting T helper (Th) and lymphokine-responsive T effector (Teff) cells. In the present study, we have assess...

We study the origin of the bi-stability jump in the terminal velocity of the winds of supergiants near spectral type B1. Observations show that here the ratio v∞/vesc drops steeply from about 2.6 at types earlier than B1 to a value of v∞/vesc=1.3 at types later than B2. To this purpose, we have calculated wind models and mass-loss rates for early-type supergiants in a Teff grid covering the ran...