Despite major therapeutic advances in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), there is still no curative strategy and new treatment approaches with improved efficacy are urgently needed. Although showing clinical activity in CLL patients, anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies in chemoimmunotherapeutic regimens display rather limited efficacy. Thus combinations of targeted therapies with immunotherapeuti...

To investigate whether autoantibodies against CD4-positive lymphocytes might induce helper dysfunction, autoantibody formation and T-cell function was examined simultaneously in 61 hemophilia patients. Twenty patients were human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative, 26 HIV-positive stage CDC II or III, and 15 were HIV-positive stage CDC IV. T lymphocytes, CD4-positive, or CD8-positive T subset...

BACKGROUND/AIM Cholesterol-dependent cytolysins (CDCs) are pore-forming toxins from Gram-positive bacteria. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of a CDC, intermedilysin, as a drug-delivery system (DDS) for clinical application. MATERIALS AND METHODS Intermedilysin was modified by the addition of a disulfide bridge to regulate pore formation, by swapping domain 4 to provide ...

A quantitative immunofluorescence platelet-associated immunoglobulins (PA-IgG) assay was used to detect alloimmunity to platelets in 8/12 multitransfused patients and to perform platelet crossmatching in the 8 alloimmunized patients. The correct separation of multitransfused patients into alloimmune and nonalloimmune groups was substantiated with chromium-51-labeled platelet survival studies. F...

The recognition and binding of cholesterol is an important feature of many eukaryotic, viral, and prokaryotic proteins, but the molecular details of such interactions are understood only for a few proteins. The pore-forming cholesterol-dependent cytolysins (CDCs) contribute to the pathogenic mechanisms of a large number of Gram-positive bacteria. Cholesterol dependence of the CDC mechanism is a...

In an attempt to produce allonatibodies to cytotoxic T-cell receptors, hyperimmune anti-lymphocyte antisera have been raised in mice of various strain combinations, and have been tested for their ability to block allogeneic cell-mediated lymphocytotoxicity (CML) in the absence of complement at the T killer cell level. Most of the sera failed to show any significant and reproducible inhibitory e...

The blood of twelve patients with parasitologically proved visceral leishmaniasis was examined for the presence of antibodies against blood cells. The direct antiglobulin test (Coombs' test) was positive in ten. IgG and complement were found on the red cells (alone or combined), but no IgA or IgM. In the serum of two, warm antibodies were found in the bromelin test. Pseudo-agglutination was det...