background: the ability of the ovary to respond to exogenous gonadotrophin stimulation and development of several follicles is essential in assisted reproductive technology. neither age and regularity of menses nor follicular phase fsh and estradiol concentrations are reliable predictors of ovarian response. day 3 serum inhibin-b level, during induction ovulation, has been proposed as a predict...

Myeloid dendritic cells (mDCs) are the antigen-presenting cells best capable of promoting peripheral induction of regulatory T cells (Tregs), and are among the first targets of HIV. It is thus important to understand whether HIV alters their capacity to promote Treg conversion. Monocyte-derived DCs (moDCs) from uninfected donors induced a Treg phenotype (CD25(+)FOXP3(+)) in autologous conventio...

The human Melan-A/MART-1 gene encodes an HLA-A2-restricted peptide epitope recognized by melanoma-reactive CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Here we report that this gene also encodes at least one HLA-DR4-presented peptide recognized by CD4(+) T cells. The Melan-A/MART-1(51-73) peptide was able to induce the in vitro expansion of specific CD4(+) T cells derived from normal DR4(+) donors or from D...

Many security protocols have the aim of authenticating one agent acting as initiator to another agent acting as responder and vice versa. Sometimes, the authentication fails because of executing several parallel sessions of a protocol, and because an agent may play both the initiator and responder role in parallel sessions. We take advantage of the notion of transition systems to specify authen...

BACKGROUND The use of methylprednisolone (MP) and other corticosteroids for the treatment of acute liver allograft rejection is associated with severe toxicities in nontarget tissues. Therefore, selective delivery of MP to the liver may improve its efficacy and alleviate its side effects. We investigated the effects of a novel liver-targeted dextran prodrug of MP (DMP) in an orthotopic rat live...

Most studies of human T-cell responses in tuberculosis have focused on persons with either active disease or latent infection. Although this work has been critical in defining T-cell correlates of successful versus failed host containment, little is known about the development of Mycobacterium-specific T-cell responses in uninfected persons. To explore this issue, naive T cells from uninfected ...