Aluminum salts gels (alum) are TLR-independent adjuvants and have been used to boost antibody responses in alum-based vaccines such as diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus toxoid (DPT) triple vaccine. However, the pro-Th2 activity of alum-based vaccine formulations has not been fully appreciated. Here we found that alum-based tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccine was biased toward a Th-2 profile as shown b...

Induction of potent antibody is the goal of many vaccines targeted against infections or cancer. Modern vaccine designs that use virus-like particles (VLP) have shown efficacy for prophylactic vaccination against virus-associated cancer in the clinic. Here we used plant viral particles (PVP), which are structurally analogous to VLP, coupled to a weak idiotypic (Id) tumour antigen, as a conjugat...

CpG-Oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) has two backbones. Phosphorothioate backbone (PS) shows a strong immunostimulating effect while phosphodiester (PE) shows little in vivo. 3' hexameric deoxyriboguanosine-run (3' dG(6)-run) conjugation to PE CpG-ODN has been reported to enhance immunostimulation and to protect against asthma when injected at the time of sensitization in mice. We evaluated the treat...

The protective efficacy of mAbs to Cryptococcus neoformans glucuronoxylomannan depends on Ab isotype. Previous studies in A/JCr and C57BL/6J mice showed relative protective efficacy of IgG1, IgG2a >> IgG3. However, we now report that in C57BL/6J x 129/Sv mice, IgG3 is protective while IgG1 is not protective, with neither isotype being protective in 129/Sv mice. IgG1, IgG2a, and IgG3 had differe...

We have studied several monoclonal anti-double-stranded (ds) DNA antibodies for their ability to accelerate lupus nephritis in young NZB X NZW F1 female mice and to induce it in BALB/c mice. Two identified as pathogens in both strains have characteristics previously associated with nephritogenicity: expression of IgG2a isotype and IdGN2 idiotype. Both pathogenic antibodies used the combination ...

We assessed the immune response against recombinant proteins of two related, albeit functionally different, peroxidoxins from Leishmania donovani: peroxidoxin 1 (LdPxn1) and peroxidoxin 2 (LdPxn2) in BALB/c mice. We also evaluated the effect of coadministration of TLR agonists (CpG ODN and GLA-SE) on the antigen-specific immune response. Immunization with recombinant LdPxn1 alone induced a pred...

Variants of the J774 mouse macrophage cell line that lack immunologically important membrane receptors were isolated. After mutagenesis, variants were selected in a metrizamide gradient that separated cells heavily rosetted with sheep erythrocytes (E) coated with rabbit anti-E IgG (EIgG) from poorly rosetted cells. Stable variants that exhibited altered binding were found with a frequency of <1...

Experimental murine models with high, intermediate and low levels of genetically based susceptibility to Leishmania major infection reproduce almost entire spectrum of clinical manifestations of the human disease. There are increasing non-comparative studies on immune responses against isolated antigens of L. major in different murine strains. The aim of the present study was to find out whethe...