Abstract Generation of immunity against cancer through vaccination has long been an elusive goal for tumor immunologists. Putative candidates targets include oncofetal antigens, viral neoantigens, and differentiation antigens. The first attempts at used injections whole autologous cells. However, these unmodified cells did not engender a robust immune response. Subsequent efforts were focused e...

Evidence has accumulated that T cell-mediated autoimmunity plays an important role in the pathogenesis of viral myocarditis. T lymphocytes are known to recognize antigen-presenting cells, such as virus-infected cells, being restricted by syngeneic major histocompatibility complex (MHC) antigens. To clarify in more detail the immunological mechanisms involved, we induced acute viral myocarditis ...

The host defense response to influenza infection is complex. Specific humoral antibodies develop to the strain-specific surface antigens, the hemagglutinin and the neuraminidase, and to the internal antigens (matrix and nucleoprotein) which are common to all influenza A viruses (1). Antibodies to the hemagglutinin, which is the major surface antigen, neutralize viral infectivity (2). In additio...

Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV) is the etiological agent of Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a rare and highly lethal human skin cancer. A natural component of skin flora, MCV becomes tumorigenic only after integration into the host DNA together with specific mutations to the viral genome. Research on MCV large T (LT) and small T (sT) antigens, the only viral products expressed in MCC, shows that th...

The lesions caused by maedi-visna virus (MVV) are known to be immune mediated with a presumed contribution by the response to viral antigens. However, very little is known about the T-cell response to individual viral proteins. We have therefore expressed the three individual gag antigens of MVV strain EV1 (p16, p25, and p14) in a bacterial expression system and used the purified recombinant pr...

Vero cells productively infected with the Halle strain of measles virus have been studied by means of surface replication, freeze-fracturing, and surface labeling with horseradish peroxidase-measles antibody conjugate in order to examine changes in the structure of the cell membrane during viral maturation. Early in infection, the surfaces of infected cells are embossed by scattered groups of t...

Effective viral clearance requires the induction of virus-specific CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). Since dendritic cells (DC) have a central role in initiating and shaping virus-specific CTL responses, it is important to understand how DC initiate virus-specific CTL responses. Some viruses can directly infect DC, which theoretically allow direct presentation of viral antigens to CTL, but ...

Avian influenza (AI) H9N2 is a low pathogenic virus subtype belonging to Orthomyxoviridae family. Given the prevalence of this subtype as an infectious agent in poultry industry, special attention has been always directed toward the development of vaccine production against this infection. The vaccine of this infection is produced by killing the virus and using a mixture of inactivated antigen ...

Abstract Various infectious and non-infectious agents can cause myocarditis that may lead to cardiomyopathy with viruses being the most common suspects. Mechanistically, autoantibodies have been demonstrated for various antigens, in animal models dilated patients, but their role continues be enigmatic. First, by using Coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) infection model A/J mice, we applied PhIP-Seq, a hig...

Specific inbred strains of mice have been shown to vary considerably in their resistance and susceptibility to herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection. We injected 2 X 10(5) plaque forming units (PFU) of the KOS strain of HSV-1 intracamerally into one eye of BALB/c, C57Bl/6, and F1 (BALB/c X C57Bl/6) mice. HSV-1 antigens were localized in frozen sections of enucleated eyes at 10 to 14 days post-in...