BACKGROUND CD8 T cells are thought to play an important role in protective immunity to tuberculosis. The major histocompatibility complex class I subtype HLA-A*0201 is one of the most prevalent class I alleles, with a frequency of over 30% in most populations. HLA-A*0201 transgenic, H-2D(b)/mouse beta2-microglobulin double-knockout mice (HHD) which express human HLA-A*0201 but no mouse class 1,...

introduction: training medical students and prepare them for diagnosis, treatment and care of diseases, is the main goal of medical education. according to  importance of adapting educational content to the needs of society and the high incidence of infectious diseases in the country,  decided to study  the knowledge of medical students and public health students about tuberculosis (tb) and dir...

Short peptide fragments of intracellular proteins that fit a defined sequence motif bind to the most common human major histocompatibility complex class I molecule, HLA A*0201, and mediate killing by cytotoxic T-cells [D.F. Hunt et al., Science (Washington DC), 255: 1261-1263, 1992; K. Falk et al., Nature (Lond.), 351: 290-296, 1991]. The existence of such a motif allows prediction of whether n...

Cancer immunotherapy is a potential therapeutic strategy, in addition to surgical treatment, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Cancer-specific immunotherapy, such as the MAGE peptide vaccine, has been utilized clinically. How-ever, there are inherent limits to the effectiveness of vaccinotherapy using a single antigen because of the expression frequency of cancer-specific antigens on tumor cells....

T-cell-mediated immunotherapy of hematological malignancies requires selection of targeted tumor-associated antigens and T-cell epitopes contained in these tumor proteins. Epidermal growth factor receptor pathway substrate 8 (EPS8), whose function is pivotal for tumor proliferation, progression and metastasis, has been found to be overexpressed in most human tumor types, while its expression in...

An important element in melanoma vaccine construction is to identify peptides from melanoma-associated Ags that have immunogenic potential in humans and are recognized by CD8+ T cells in vivo. To identify such peptides, we evaluated HLA-A*02+ melanoma patients immunized to a polyvalent vaccine containing multiple Ags, including MAGE-3, Melan-A/MART-1, gp100, tyrosinase, melanocortin receptor (M...

Aurora-A kinase (Aur-A) is a member of the serine/threonine kinase family that regulates the cell division process, and has recently been implicated in tumorigenesis. In this study, we identified an antigenic 9-amino-acid epitope (Aur-A(207-215): YLILEYAPL) derived from Aur-A capable of generating leukemia-reactive cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in the context of HLA-A*0201. The synthetic pepti...

Initial studies suggested that major histocompatibility complex class I-restricted viral epitopes could be predicted by the presence of particular residues termed anchors. However, recent studies showed that nonanchor positions of the epitopes are also significant for class I binding and recognition by cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). We investigated if changing nonanchor amino acids could incre...

The development of a protective cellular immune response line for lysis. In vitro immunization of PBMC from HLA A*0201 and HCMV seropositive volunteers using the defined against human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the most important determinant of recovery from HCMV infection after nonamer peptide stimulated significant recognition of HCMV infected or peptide-sensitized fibroblasts. Similarly, allo...