Early after HIV infection, B-cell homeostasis is disrupted which results in autoantibody production and autoimmunity. The systemic inflammation induced during chronic HIV infection relaxes B-cell tolerance mechanisms that normally suppress this autoimmune pathology. Tolerance to self antigens is established during the development of B cells; however, rare, broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV...

Mice were immunized with lethal Plasmodium yoelii blood-stage malaria antigens that had been fractionated by isoelectric focusing using a variety of Ampholines over the range pH 3 to 10. Fractions were tested for their ability to protect against live challenge and to prime for parasite-specific T-cell help. Both activities exhibited three major peaks in the pH regions 4.5, 6.5, and 8, the pH 4....

It is well known that Leptospira vaccine prevents the disease. However specificity for serovars limits the efficacy of killed whole cell vaccines. Leptospiral antigens that induce cross-protective immunity to the various serovars are sought as new vaccine candidates. In this paper, we have summarized both past and current findings about leptospiral antigens that are conserved among pathogenic l...

Staphylococcus aureus is the most common cause of hospital-acquired infection. Because of the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains, these infections represent a serious public health threat. To develop a broadly protective vaccine, we tested cell wall-anchored surface proteins of S. aureus as antigens in a murine model of abscess formation. Immunization with four antigens (IsdA, IsdB, SdrD...

Despite the introduction of conjugated polysaccharide vaccines for many of the Neisseria meningitidis serogroups, neisserial infections continue to cause septicaemia and meningitis across the world. This is in part due to the difficulties in developing a, cross-protective vaccine that is effective against all serogroups, including serogroup B meningococci. Although convalescent N. meningitidis ...

With many protective vaccine antigens reported in the literature and verified experimentally, how to use the knowledge mined from these antigens to support rational vaccine design and study underlying design mechanism remains unclear. In order to address the problem, a systematic bioinformatics analysis was performed on 291 Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial protective antigens with expe...

As the disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis continues to be a burden, there is a concerted effort to find new vaccines to combat this problem. One of the important vaccine strategies is whole bacterial vaccines. This approach relies on multiple antigens and built-in adjuvanticity. Other mycobacterial strains which share cross-reactive antigens with M. tuberculosis have been considered a...

Pre-erythrocytic malaria vaccines, including those based on whole-parasite approaches, have shown protective efficacy in animal and human studies. However few pre-erythocytic antigens other than the immunodominant circumsporozoite protein (CSP) have been studied in depth with the goal of developing potent subunit malaria vaccines that are suited for use in endemic areas. Here we describe a nove...

The data presented in this paper establish the finding that multiple specific protective antibodies exist in rabbits in response to immunization with Group B streptococci. The summary in Table I indicates the serological types into which Group B streptococci have been divided on the basis of their antigenic composition. This classification is dependent upon passive protection of mice with antib...