BACKGROUND Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) heparin binding hemagglutinin (HBHA) is an Ag known to evoke effective host immune responses during tuberculosis infection. However, the molecular basis of the host immune response to HBHA has not been fully characterized. In this study, we examined the molecular mechanisms by which HBHA can induce the expression of proinflammatory cytokines in macrop...

Because only 10% of individuals infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis will eventually develop disease, antigens that are recognized differently by the immune systems of infected healthy and diseased subjects may constitute potential vaccine candidates. Here, the heparin-binding hemagglutinin adhesin (HBHA) is identified as such an antigen. Lymphocytes from 60% of healthy infected individuals...

The Heparin-Binding Haemagglutinin (HBHA) is a mycobacterial adhesin involved in the dissemination of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the site of primary infection and a potential candidate for the development of a new vaccine against tuberculosis. Methylation of HBHA is a novel post-translational event that imparts important immunological properties to the protein. Since recombinant HBHA expre...

Airway epithelial cell is often the initial site of attack by pathogens, and cell death is commonly caused by internalization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). However, the mechanism of interaction between epithelial cells and Mtb is not well understood. In this study, we investigated the role of the heparin-binding hemagglutinin (HBHA) protein of Mtb in the function of epithelial cells. In ...

Heparin-binding hemagglutinin (HBHA) is a virulence factor of tuberculosis which is responsible for extrapulmonary dissemination of this disease. A thorough biochemical characterization of HBHA has provided experimental evidence of a coiled-coil nature of HBHA. These data, together with the low-resolution structures of a full-length form and a truncated form of HBHA obtained by small-angle X-ra...

Objectives Heparin-binding hemagglutinin (HBHA), a mycobacterial cell surface protein, mediates adhesion to nonphagocytic cells and the dissemination of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) from the site of primary infection. Superior expression systems are required to obtain abundant M. tuberculosis proteins for the purpose of diagnosing M. tuberculosis infection or for the immunizatio...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis heparin-binding hemagglutinin (HBHA), a virulence factor involved in extrapulmonary dissemination and a strong diagnostic antigen against tuberculosis, is both surface-associated and secreted. The role of HBHA in macrophages during M. tuberculosis infection, however, is less well known. Here, we show that recombinant HBHA produced by Mycobacterium smegmatis effectivel...

Identification and characterization of serologically active mycobacterial antigens are prerequisites for the development of diagnostic reagents. We examined the humoral immune responses of active tuberculosis (TB) patients against Triton-soluble proteins extracted from Mycobacterium tuberculosis by immunoblotting. A 29-kDa protein reacted with immunoglobulin M (IgM) in the pooled sera of the pa...

The heparin-binding hemagglutinin (HBHA) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a surface-expressed adhesin that can affect binding to host cells via a unique, methylated, carboxyl-terminal, lysine-, alanine-, and proline-rich repeat region. It has been implicated in extrapulmonary dissemination of M. tuberculosis from the lung following the initial infection of the host. To assess the vaccine potent...

The heparin-binding hemagglutinin (HBHA) is one of the few virulence factors identified for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is a surface-associated adhesin that expresses a number of different activities, including mycobacterial adhesion to nonphagocytic cells and microbial aggregation. Previous evidence indicated that HBHA is likely to form homodimers or homopolymers via a predicted coiled-coil...