BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is the main cause of chronic liver disease and to date there has been no vaccine development to prevent this infection. Among non-structural HCV proteins, NS3 protein is an excellent goal for a therapeutic vaccine, due to its large size and less variation in conserved regions. The immunogenic properties of heat shock proteins (HSPs) for instance GP96...

FOXP3 positive regulatory T cells (Tregs) are key players in maintaining peripheral immune tolerance. Multiple molecules and signaling pathways are involved in regulating Treg function. Understanding these mechanisms is vital to designing Treg-targeted immunotherapeutic strategies for cancer and other diseases. A recent study uncovered that endoplasmic reticulum resident chaperone, gp96, is ess...

Despite the fundamental function of neutrophils (polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs)) in innate immunity, their role in Escherichia coli K1 (EC-K1) -induced meningitis is unexplored. Here we show that PMN-depleted mice are resistant to EC-K1 (RS218) meningitis. EC-K1 survives and multiplies in PMNs for which outer membrane protein ...

Select members of the heat shock proteins (HSPs) family, such as gp96, elicit immune responses specific to their chaperoned peptides. Although immunologic effects of HSPs on APCs described to date have largely been demonstrated with cell lines or primary cells in culture, their collective responses in vitro have been consistent with priming immune responses. In this study, we examine the physio...

A major challenge for designing prophylactic cancer vaccines is to define immunogenic and safe cancer antigens. Given the striking similarity of antigen expression patterns between cancer and embryonic tissues, we defined a prototype strategy of using placenta-derived heat shock protein gp96, which induces prophylactic anti-tumor T cell responses. Immunization with placental gp96 provided parti...

conclusions we have highlighted the role of rns3 plus rnt-gp96 mediated by α5integrin in producing il-12 and tnfα. it can be suggested that rnt-gp96 could enhance immunity characteristic of rns3 protein via production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. results our results showed that rnt-gp96 alone significantly increases the expression level of il-12, tnfα and α5integrin in thp-1 macrophages and d...

Gp96 is an endoplasmic reticular heat shock protein (HSP). We have shown previously that surface expression of gp96 (96tm) on tumor cells led to the activation of dendritic cells and increased anti-tumor immunity. In this report, we have found that protective immunity elicited by 96tm+ tumor cells was tumor-specific and long-lasting. Both CD4+ and CD8+ T cell memory were elicited. By immunizing...

CD46 and CD134 mediate attachment of Human Herpesvirus 6A (HHV-6A) and HHV-6B to host cell, respectively. But many cell types interfere with viral infection through rapid degradation of viral DNA. Hence, not all cells expressing these receptors are permissive to HHV-6 DNA replication and production of infective virions suggesting the involvement of additional factors that influence HHV-6 propag...

BACKGROUND Heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) inhibitors have emerged as a promising class of anti-cancer drugs in both solid and hematologic malignancies. The HSP90 family includes the cytosolic HSP90 (HSP90AA1), the ER paralogue gp96 (HSP90B1) and the mitochondrial member TRAP1 (HSP90L). We evaluated the in vitro anti-tumor activity and mechanism of action of PU-H71, a novel purine scaffold HSP90 ...

The ability of mature T lymphocytes to develop effector capacity after encounter with cognate Ag is generally dependent upon inflammatory signals associated with infection that induce dendritic cell activation/maturation. These inflammatory signals can derive directly from pathogens or can be expressed by host cells in response to infection. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a class of host-derive...