Understanding functional interactions between DCs and antigens is necessary for achieving an optimal and desired immune response during vaccine development. Here, we identified and characterized protein Rv2299c (heat-shock protein 90 family), which effectively induced DC maturation. The Rv2299c-maturated DCs showed increased expression of surface molecules and production of proinflammatory cyto...

BACKGROUND An IFN-γ response to M. tuberculosis-specific antigens is an effective biomarker for M. tuberculosis infection but it cannot discriminate between latent TB infection and active TB disease. Combining a number of cytokine/chemokine responses to M. tuberculosis antigens may enable differentiation of latent TB from active disease. METHODS Asymptomatic recently-exposed individuals (spou...

BACKGROUND To evaluate interleukin (IL)-2 and interferon (IFN)-γ secreting T-cells in parallel for the differentiation of latent infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (LTBI) from active tuberculosis. METHODS Following ex-vivo stimulation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) with M. tuberculosis-specific antigens early secretory antigenic target (ESAT)-6 and culture filtr...

The diagnosis of smear-negative and culture-negative patients with active tuberculosis (TB) is challenging. The detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific antibodies in human sera has been an important diagnostic aid. However, detection of antibody responses to a single antigen usually has a low sensitivity for diagnosis of TB. In this study, humoral immune responses against recombinant M...

Improved vaccines capable of promoting long-term cellular immunity are urgently required for a number of diseases that remain global health problems. In the present study, we demonstrate that a tuberculosis subunit vaccine, Ag85B-ESAT-6/CAF01 (where ESAT-6 is early secreted antigenic target of 6 kDa and CAF01 is cationic adjuvant formulation 01), induces very robust memory CD4 T cell responses ...

DNA vaccination is known to elicit robust cellular and humoral responses to encoded antigen. The co-administration of costimulatory molecules CD80 (B7-1), CD86 (B7-2) and CD154 (CD40L) has been shown to enhance immune responses in several murine models. The role of specific costimulatory molecules in non-rodent species remains incompletely characterized. In these studies, we demonstrate that th...

BACKGROUND Mycobacterium tuberculosis Region-of-Difference-1 gene products present opportunities for specific diagnosis of M. tuberculosis infection, yet immune responses to only two gene-products, Early Secretory Antigenic Target-6 (ESAT-6) and Culture Filtrate Protein-10 (CFP-10), have been comprehensively investigated. METHODS T-cell responses to Rv3873, Rv3878 and Rv3879c were quantified ...

Cell-mediated immune responses are critical for protective immunity to mycobacterial infections. Recent progress in defining mycobacterial antigens has determined that region of difference 1 (RD1) gene products induce strong T-cell responses, particularly the early secretory antigenic target 6-kDa (ESAT-6) protein and culture filtrate protein 10 (CFP10). However, comprehensive analysis of the i...

The elucidation of the molecular and immunological mechanisms mediating maintenance of latency in human tuberculosis aids to develop more effective vaccines and to define biologically meaningful markers for immune protection. We analyzed granuloma-associated lymphocytes (GALs) from human lung biopsies of five patients with latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection. MTB CD4+ and CD8+ T c...

Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global public health problem with an estimated one-third of the world's population infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, thus necessitating fast and accurate diagnosis of TB. However, the diagnosis of latent infection remains difficult due to the lack of a simple, reliable test for M. tuberculosis infection. The objective of the current study was to generate and...