M. Bevan showed in the mid-seventies that cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses may be initiated by antigen-presenting cells that do not express the antigens themselves (1). He called this process cross-priming. The antigen-presenting cells involved in cross-priming must therefore inter-nalize and present antigens to CD8 ϩ T cells in the context of MHC class I molecules. This process is often ...

Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) infects T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells and can manipulate their cytoskeleton structures at multiple steps during its replication cycle. Based on pharmacological and genetic targeting of cytoskeleton modulators, new imaging approaches and primary cell culture models, important roles for actin and microtubules during entry and cell-to-cell transfer...

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. ...

The prevention and treatment of prevalent infectious diseases and tumors should benefit from improvements in the induction of antigen-specific T cell immunity. To assess the potential of antigen targeting to dendritic cells to improve immunity, we incorporated ovalbumin protein into a monoclonal antibody to the DEC-205 receptor, an endocytic receptor that is abundant on these cells in lymphoid ...

The leading positions in terms of frequency, severity the course and high mortality belong to infectious forms acute pancreatitis. However, not all pathophysiological mechanisms development this disorder have been studied. Given that immune responses are an integral part pathogenesis pancreatitis, it is extremely important study relationship between inflammation activation response. This review...

In subunit vaccines, strong CD8(+) T-cell responses are desired, yet they are elusive at reasonable adjuvant doses. We show that targeting adjuvant to the lymph node (LN) via ultrasmall polymeric nanoparticles (NPs), which rapidly drain to the LN after intradermal injection, greatly enhances adjuvant efficacy at low doses. Coupling CpG-B or CpG-C oligonucleotides to NPs led to better dual-targe...

BACKGROUND Many membrane proteins, including Drosophila Dscam, are enriched in dendrites or axons within neurons. However, little is known about how the differential distribution is established and maintained. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Here we investigated the mechanisms underlying the dendritic targeting of Dscam[TM1]. Through forward genetic mosaic screens and by silencing specific gen...