APO-1 is a cell surface molecule that induces apoptosis when ligated with the monoclonal antibody anti-APO-1. Expression of APO-1 and response to anti-APO-1 was investigated in a number of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-positive and -negative Burkitt lymphoma (BL) cell lines, in EBV-immortalized lymphoblastoid cell lines, and in cells from fresh BL biopsies. APO-1 was not expressed in EBV-negative ce...

BACKGROUND White blood cells have been shown in animal studies to play a central role in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy. Lymphoblastoid cells are immortalized EBV-transformed primary B-cell leukocytes that have been extensively used as a model for conditions in which white blood cells play a primary role. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether lymphoblastoid cell lines, ...

Neutropenia secondary to chemotherapy in breast cancer patients can be life-threatening and there are no biomarkers available to predict the risk of drug-induced neutropenia in those patients. We previously performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for neutropenia events in women with breast cancer who were treated with 5-fluorouracil, epirubicin and cyclophosphamide and recruited to the...

Poor immune reconstitution after haploidentical stem cell transplantation results in a high mortality from viral infections and relapse. One approach to overcome this problem is to selectively deplete the graft of alloreactive cells using an immunotoxin directed against the activation marker CD25. However, the degree of depletion of alloreactive cells is variable following stimulation with reci...

CD8(+) cells have an important role in controlling Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection. We adapted the interferon-gamma ELISPOT assay to the quantitative analysis of EBV-specific CD8(+) cells. Using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from healthy donors, we measured both the aggregate response to the virus, using EBV-transformed lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) as stimulators, and the sp...

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-carrying Burkitt lymphoma (BL) cells are relatively or completely resistant to the lytic effect of major histocompatibility complex class I HLA antigen-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) generated by stimulating lymphocytes of EBV-seropositive donors with the autologous EBV-transformed lymphoblastoid cell line (LCL). We previously found that EBV-negative and EBV-...

The Polo-like kinases (Plks) are a highly conserved family of protein kinases that function in regulation of cell cycle and DNA damage-induced checkpoints. Evidence of a tumor suppressor function for the Plks in human neoplasia is lacking. Here, we report that Snk/Plk2 is transcriptionally down-regulated in B-cell neoplasms. Silencing occurs with very high frequency in Burkitt lymphoma (BL) but...

Epstein Barr virus (EBV) is a gamma herpesvirus that is associated with several specific lymphoid malignancies, some of which occur more frequently in immunocompromised individuals. EBV infection is almost ubiquitous in healthy adults, so establishing a causal role in lymphomagenesis has been difficult. Support for EBV being an oncogenic virus is derived from its ability to infect and transform...

Non-additive interaction between genetic variants, or epistasis, is a possible explanation for the gap between heritability of complex traits and the variation explained by identified genetic loci. Interactions give rise to genotype dependent variance, and therefore the identification of variance quantitative trait loci can be an intermediate step to discover both epistasis and gene by environm...

Recent evidence has shown that the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) oncogene LMP1 is not expressed at high levels early after EBV infection of primary B cells, despite its being essential for the long-term outgrowth of immortalized lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs). In this study, we found that expression of LMP1 increased 50-fold between 7 days postinfection and the LCL state. Metabolic labeling of nas...