Mucosal immunization with integrase-defective lentiviral vectors protects against influenza virus challenge in mice.

Recent reports highlight the potential for integrase-defective lentiviral vectors (IDLV) to be developed as vaccines due to their ability to elicit cell-mediated and humoral immune responses after intramuscular administration. Differently from their integrase-competent counterpart, whose utility for vaccine development is limited by the potential for insertional mutagenesis, IDLV possess a mutation in their integrase gene that prevents genomic integration. Instead, they are maintained as episomal DNA circles that retain the ability to stably express functional proteins.

Kaposi's Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus Subversion of the Anti-Inflammatory Response in Human Skin Cells Reveals Correlates of Latency and Disease Pathogenesis.

KSHV is the etiologic agent for Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), a neoplasm that manifests most aggressively as multifocal lesions on parts of human skin with a propensity for inflammatory reactivity. However, mechanisms that control evolution of KS from a benign hyperplasia to the histologically complex cutaneous lesion remain unknown. In this study, we found that KSHV induces proteomic and morphological changes in melanocytes and melanoma-derived cell lines, accompanied by deregulation of the endogenous anti-inflammatory responses anchored by the MC1-R/ α -MSH signaling axis.

Translational research in infectious disease: current paradigms and challenges ahead.

In recent years, the biomedical community has witnessed a rapid scientific and technologic evolution after the development and refinement of high-throughput methodologies. Concurrently and consequentially, the scientific perspective has changed from the reductionist approach of meticulously analyzing the fine details of a single component of biology to the "holistic" approach of broadmindedly examining the globally interacting elements of biological systems. The emergence of this new way of thinking has brought about a scientific revolution in which genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and other "omics" have become the predominant tools by which large amounts of data are amassed, analyzed, and applied to complex questions of biology that were previously unsolvable.

Adaptation to cell culture induces functional differences in measles virus proteins.

Background: Live, attenuated measles virus (MeV) vaccine strains were generated by adaptation to cell culture. The genetic basis for the attenuation of the vaccine strains is unknown. We previously reported that adaptation of a pathogenic, wild-type MeV to Vero cells or primary chicken embryo fibroblasts (CEFs) resulted in a loss of pathogenicity in rhesus macaques.

Inhibition of interferon induction and signaling by paramyxoviruses.

The family Paramyxoviridae comprises a diverse group of viruses that includes several important human and veterinary pathogens. Members of this family have a non-segmented, single-stranded, negative sense RNA genome, a conserved gene order, and a similar replication strategy. Paramyxoviruses are divided into two subfamilies, Paramyxovirinae and Pneumovirinae, which comprise five genera and two genera, respectively.

Regulation of interferon signaling by the C and V proteins from attenuated and wild-type strains of measles virus.

The C and V proteins of the measles virus (MV) have been shown to block the signaling of type I and II interferon (IFN-alpha/beta and IFN-gamma). The relative contribution of the C and V proteins to the inhibition of IFN signaling and the extent to which this activity differs in attenuated or wild-type strains of MV remains undefined. This study presents a comparison of the IFN-antagonist activities of C and V proteins from four attenuated and two wild-type strains of MV.