Allergic airway diseases are related to exposure to atmospheric pollutants, which have been suggested to be one factor in the increasing prevalence of asthma. Little is known about the effect of ozone and diesel exhaust particulates (DEP) on the development or aggravation of asthma. We have used a mouse asthma model to determine the effect of ozone and DEP on airway hyperresponsiveness and infl...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The egg protein ovalbumin (OVA) belongs to six most frequent food allergens. We investigated how thermal processing influences its ability to induce allergic symptoms and immune responses in mouse model of food allergy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Effect of increased temperature (70°C and 95°C) on OVA secondary structure was characterized by circular dichroism and by th...

Ingested proteins are absorbed from the intestinal lumen via the paracellular and/or transcellular pathways, depending on their physicochemical properties. In this study, we investigated the absorption pathway(s) of ovalbumin (OVA), an egg white-allergen, as well as the mechanisms of aspirin-facilitated OVA absorption in rats. In situ intestinal re-circulating perfusion experiments showed that ...

This study aimed to clarify whether Gram-positive (G+) and Gram-negative (G-) bacteria affect antigen-presenting cells differently and thereby influence the immunogenicity of proteins they express. Lactobacilli, lactococci and Escherichia coli strains were transformed with plasmids conferring intracellular ovalbumin (OVA) production. Murine splenic antigen presenting cells (APCs) were pulsed wi...

The Toxoplasma gondii population consists of multiple strains, defined by genotype and virulence. Previous studies have established that protective immunity to this organism is mediated by IL-12, which drives T cells to produce IFN-gamma. Paradoxically, although type I and type II strains of T. gondii both induce IL-12 and IFN-gamma in the mouse, type I parasites are lethal, whereas type II str...

The use of the nontoxic B subunit of cholera toxin (CTB) as mucosal adjuvant and carrier-delivery system for inducing secretory Ab responses has been documented previously with different soluble Ags. In this study, we have evaluated this approach for inducing CTL responses against a prototype Ag, OVA, in the female genital mucosa. We report here the ability of an immunogen comprised of CTB conj...

Active T cells release bioactive exosomes (EXOs). However, its potential modulation in immune responses is elusive. In this study, we in vitro generated active OVA-specific CD8(+) T cells by cultivation of OVA-pulsed dendritic cells (DC(OVA)) with naive CD8(+) T cells derived from OVA-specific TCR transgenic OTI mice and purified EXOs from CD8(+) T cell culture supernatant by differential ultra...

As a T cell-dependent phenomenon, oral tolerance is not expected to depend necessarily on native configuration of antigens. We investigated the induction of oral tolerance with modified ovalbumin (Ova). Oral administration of heat-denatured (HD-Ova) and cyanogen bromide-degraded ovalbumin was less effective than native Ova in inducing oral tolerance in B6D2F1 mice. HD-Ova was effective in suppr...

EG7-OVA cells are mouse thymoma EL4 cells stably transfected with the complementary DNA of chicken m ¡illumini (OVA) and thus express OVA epitopes as a unique antigen. Cytotoxic T lymphocytes specific to OVA can be elicited by immunization of mice with OVA osmotically loaded into syngeneic splenocytes or entrapped in lipo somes. Cytotoxic T lymphocytes thus induced can specifically cytolyse th...