Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) is the deadliest infectious disease worldwide and novel vaccines are urgently needed. HLA-E is a virtually monomorphic antigen presentation molecule and is not downregulated upon HIV co-infection. HLA-E restricted specific CD8 T cells are present in the circulation of individuals with active TB (aTB) and infection (TBI) with or without HIV co-infection, making HLA-E restricted T cells interesting vaccination targets for TB.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTuberculosis (TB) remains a significant global health challenge, latently affecting around a quarter of the global population. The sole licensed TB vaccine, Mycobacterium bovis Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), shows variable efficacy, particularly among adolescents and adults, underscoring the pressing need for more effective vaccination strategies. The administration route is crucial for vaccine efficacy, and administration via the skin, being rich in immune cells, may offer advantages over conventional subcutaneous routes, which lack direct access to abundant antigen-presenting cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Pharm
December 2024
Tuberculosis (TB) continues to pose a global threat for millennia, currently affecting over 2 billion people and causing 10.6 million new cases and 1.3 million deaths annually.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNovel vaccines targeting the world's deadliest pathogen () are urgently needed as the efficacy of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine in its current use is limited. HLA-E is a virtually monomorphic unconventional antigen presentation molecule and HLA-E restricted specific CD8 T cells can control intracellular growth, making HLA-E a promising vaccine target for . In this study, we evaluated the frequency and phenotype of HLA-E restricted specific CD4/CD8 T cells in the circulation and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of two independent non-human primate (NHP) studies and from humans receiving BCG either intradermally or mucosally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTuberculosis (TB) has been and still is a global emergency for centuries. Prevention of disease through vaccination would have a major impact on disease prevalence, but the only available current vaccine, BCG, has insufficient impact. In this article, a novel subunit vaccine against TB was developed, using the Ag85B-ESAT6-Rv2034 fusion antigen, two adjuvants - CpG and MPLA, and a cationic pH-sensitive liposome as a delivery system, representing a new TB vaccine delivery strategy not previously reported for TB.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCytomegalovirus (CMV) is one of the most common and relevant opportunistic pathogens in people who are immunocompromised, such as kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). The exact mechanisms underlying the disability of cytotoxic T cells to provide sufficient protection against CMV in people who are immunosuppressed have not been identified yet. Here, we performed in-depth metabolic profiling of CMV-specific CD8+ T cells in patients who are immunocompromised and show the development of metabolic dysregulation at the transcriptional, protein, and functional level of CMV-specific CD8+ T cells in KTRs with noncontrolled CMV infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHLA-E molecules can present self- and pathogen-derived peptides to both natural killer (NK) cells and T cells. T cells that recognize HLA-E peptides via their T cell receptor (TCR) are termed donor-unrestricted T cells due to restricted allelic variation of HLA-E. The composition and repertoire of HLA-E TCRs is not known so far.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe immune checkpoint NKG2A/CD94 is a promising target for cancer immunotherapy, and its ligand major histocompatibility complex E (MHC-E) is frequently upregulated in cancer. NKG2A/CD94-mediated inhibition of lymphocytes depends on the presence of specific leader peptides in MHC-E, but when and where they are presented in situ is unknown. We apply a nanobody specific for the Qdm/Qa-1 complex, the NKG2A/CD94 ligand in mouse, and find that presentation of Qdm peptide depends on every member of the endoplasmic reticulum-resident peptide loading complex.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Anxiety and mood disorders greatly affect the quality of life for individuals worldwide. A substantial proportion of patients do not sufficiently improve during evidence-based treatments in mental healthcare. It remains challenging to predict which patients will or will not benefit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Placental transfer of maternal antibodies is essential for neonatal immunity over the first months of life. In the setting of maternal HIV infection, HIV-exposed uninfected (HEU) infants are at higher risk of developing severe infections, including active tuberculosis (TB). Given our emerging appreciation for the potential role of antibodies in the control of (), the bacteria that causes TB, here we aimed to determine whether maternal HIV status altered the quality of -specific placental antibody transfer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The ability to adapt is a core aspect of daily human life. Recent models and theories emphasize its essential role for health and well-being. It concerns the perceived ability to readjust and actively deal with the psychosocial consequences of challenging events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFViral-vectored vaccines are highly amenable for respiratory mucosal delivery as a means of inducing much-needed mucosal immunity at the point of pathogen entry. Unfortunately, current monovalent viral-vectored tuberculosis (TB) vaccine candidates have failed to demonstrate satisfactory clinical protective efficacy. As such, there is a need to develop next-generation viral-vectored TB vaccine strategies which incorporate both vaccine antigen design and delivery route.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmune checkpoint therapy (ICT) has the power to eradicate cancer, but the mechanisms that determine effective therapy-induced immune responses are not fully understood. Here, using high-dimensional single-cell profiling, we interrogate whether the landscape of T cell states in the peripheral blood predict responses to combinatorial targeting of the OX40 costimulatory and PD-1 inhibitory pathways. Single-cell RNA sequencing and mass cytometry expose systemic and dynamic activation states of therapy-responsive CD4 and CD8 T cells in tumor-bearing mice with expression of distinct natural killer (NK) cell receptors, granzymes, and chemokines/chemokine receptors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is growing interest in HLA-E-restricted T-cell responses as a possible novel, highly conserved, vaccination targets in the context of infectious and malignant diseases. The developing field of HLA multimers for the detection and study of peptide-specific T cells has allowed the in-depth study of TCR repertoires and molecular requirements for efficient antigen presentation and T-cell activation. In this study, we developed a method for efficient peptide thermal exchange on HLA-E monomers and multimers allowing the high-throughput production of HLA-E multimers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTuberculosis (TB) remains one of the deadliest infectious diseases worldwide, posing great social and economic burden to affected countries. Novel vaccine approaches are needed to increase protective immunity against the causative agent (Mtb) and to reduce the development of active TB disease in latently infected individuals. Donor-unrestricted T cell responses represent such novel potential vaccine targets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe () complex accounts for more than 80% of all pulmonary diseases caused by non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) infections, which have an alarming increase in prevalence and vary in different regions, currently reaching 0.3-9.8 per 100,000 individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the mechanisms and impact of booster vaccinations are essential in the design and delivery of vaccination programs. Here we show that a three dose regimen of a synthetic peptide vaccine elicits an accruing CD8 T cell response against one SARS-CoV-2 Spike epitope. We see protection against lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection in the K18-hACE2 transgenic mouse model in the absence of neutralizing antibodies, but two dose approaches are insufficient to confer protection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTuberculosis (TB) is among the leading causes of death worldwide from a single infectious agent, second only to COVID-19 in 2020. TB is caused by infection with (Mtb), that results either in a latent or active form of disease, the latter associated with Mtb spread. In the absence of an effective vaccine, epidemiologic modeling suggests that aggressive treatment of individuals with active TB (ATB) may curb spread.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a hematological malignancy caused by clonal expansion of myeloid progenitor cells. Most patients with AML respond to chemotherapy, but relapses often occur and infer a very poor prognosis. Thirty to thirty-five percent of AMLs carry a four base pair insertion in the nucleophosmin 1 gene (NPM1) with a C-terminal alternative reading frame of 11 amino acids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLeprosy is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae leading to irreversible disabilities along with social exclusion. Leprosy is a spectral disease for which the clinical outcome after M. leprae infection is determined by host factors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNovel tuberculosis (TB)-vaccines preferably should (i) boost host immune responses induced by previous BCG vaccination and (ii) be directed against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) proteins expressed throughout the Mtb infection-cycle. Human Mtb antigen-discovery screens identified antigens encoded by Mtb-genes highly expressed during in vivo murine infection (IVE-TB antigens). To translate these findings towards animal models, we determined which IVE-TB-antigens are recognised by T-cells following Mtb challenge or BCG vaccination in three different mouse strains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: High serum interleukin (IL-6) levels may cause resistance to immunotherapy by modulation of myeloid cells in the tumor microenvironment. IL-6 signaling blockade is tested in cancer, but as this inflammatory cytokine has pleiotropic effects, this treatment is not always effective.
Methods: IL-6 and IL-6R blockade was applied in an IL-6-mediated immunotherapy-resistant TC-1 tumor model (TC-1.