Publications by authors named "Jutta Horejs-Hoeck"

The signaling pathway that comprises cyclic guanosine monophosphate-adenosine monophosphate (cGAMP or GMP-AMP) synthase (cGAS) and Stimulator of Interferon Genes (STING) is emerging as a druggable target for immunotherapy, with tumor-resident dendritic cells (DC) playing a critical role in mediating its effects. The STING receptor is part of the DNA-sensing cellular machinery, that can trigger the secretion of pro-inflammatory mediators, priming effector T cells and initiating specific antitumor responses. Yet, recent studies have highlighted the dual role of STING activation in the context of cancer: STING can either promote antitumor responses or enhance tumor progression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sophisticated immune evasion strategies enable to colonize the gastric mucosa of approximately half of the world's population. Persistent infection and the resulting chronic inflammation are a major cause of gastric cancer. To understand the intricate interplay between and host immunity, spatial profiling was used to monitor immune cells in infected gastric tissue.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a serious blood cancer that is hard to treat, and scientists are studying a part of the immune system called the NLRP3 inflammasome to understand its role in AML.
  • Researchers looked at gene expressions in AML patients and created special cells to study how NLRP3 affects AML cell survival.
  • They found that higher levels of NLRP3 are linked to worse outcomes for patients, and blocking NLRP3 helps make AML cells die, which could lead to new treatments for the disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction & Objective: Allergic sensitization is an essential step in the development of allergic airway inflammation to birch pollen (BP); however, this process remains to be fully elucidated. Recent scientific advances have highlighted the importance of the allergen context. In this regard, microbial patterns (PAMPs) present on BP have attracted increasing interest.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Biodegradable poly(alkyl cyanoacrylate) (PACA) nanoparticles (NPs) are receiving increasing attention in anti-cancer nanomedicine development not only for targeted cancer chemotherapy, but also for modulation of the tumor microenvironment. We previously reported promising results with cabazitaxel (CBZ) loaded poly(2-ethylbutyl cyanoacrylate) NPs (PEBCA-CBZ NPs) in a patient derived xenograft (PDX) model of triple-negative breast cancer, and this was associated with a decrease in M2 macrophages. The present study aims at comparing two endotoxin-free PACA NP variants (PEBCA and poly(2-ethylhexyl cyanoacrylate); PEHCA), loaded with CBZ and test whether conjugation with folate would improve their effect.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Endotoxin, a synonym for lipopolysaccharide (LPS), is anchored in the outer membranes of Gram-negative bacteria. Even minute amounts of LPS entering the circulatory system can have a lethal immunoactivating effect. Since LPS is omnipresent in the environment, it poses a great risk of contaminating any surface or solution, including research products and pharmaceuticals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

is a widespread Gram-negative pathogen involved in a variety of gastrointestinal diseases, including gastritis, ulceration, mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma and gastric cancer. Immune responses aimed at eradication of often prove futile, and paradoxically play a crucial role in the degeneration of epithelial integrity and disease progression. We have previously shown that infection of primary human monocytes increases their potential to respond to subsequent bacterial stimuli - a process that may be involved in the generation of exaggerated, yet ineffective immune responses directed against the pathogen.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a hematopoietic malignancy characterized by altered myeloid progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation. As in many other cancers, epigenetic transcriptional repressors such as histone deacetylases (HDACs) are dysregulated in AML. Here, we investigated (1) HDAC gene expression in AML patients and in different AML cell lines and (2) the effect of treating AML cells with the specific class IIA HDAC inhibitor TMP269, by applying proteomic and comparative bioinformatic analyses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The increasing use of nanomaterials in consumer products, particularly cosmetics, raises safety concerns as nanoparticles can easily penetrate biological barriers and interact with allergens, potentially affecting immune responses.
  • - This study focuses on how silica nanoparticles interact with the birch pollen allergen Bet v 1, examining key immunotoxicity events in human immune cells, such as allergen uptake and presentation.
  • - Results show that when allergens interact with silica nanoparticles, it leads to enhanced immune responses that favor a type 1 inflammatory profile, suggesting that this interaction may reduce allergic sensitization rather than worsen it.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a highly heterogeneous malignancy of the blood and bone marrow, characterized by clonal expansion of myeloid stem and progenitor cells and rapid disease progression. Chemotherapy has been the first-line treatment for AML for more than 30 years. Application of recent high-throughput next-generation sequencing technologies has revealed significant molecular heterogeneity to AML, which in turn has motivated efforts to develop new, targeted therapies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sodium citrate-stabilized gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are destabilized when dispersed in cell culture media (CCMs). This may promote their aggregation and subsequent sedimentation, or under the proper conditions, their interaction with dispersed proteins can lead to the formation of a NP-stabilizing protein corona. CCMs are ionic solutions that contain growth substances which are typically supplemented, in addition to serum, with different substances such as dyes, antioxidants, and antibiotics.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) are generally regarded as safe and may represent an attractive carrier platform for nanomedical applications when loaded with biopharmaceuticals. Surface functionalization by different chemistries may help to optimize protein loading and may further impact uptake into the targeted tissues or cells, however, it may also alter the immunologic profile of the carrier system. In order to circumvent side effects, novel carrier candidates need to be tested thoroughly, early in their development stage within the pharmaceutical innovation pipeline, for their potential to activate or modify the immune response.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chronic infections are typically characterized by an ineffective immune response to the inducing pathogen. While failing to clear the infectious microbe, the provoked inflammatory processes may cause severe tissue damage culminating in functional impairment of the affected organ. The human pathogen Helicobacter pylori is a uniquely successful Gram-negative microorganism inhabiting the gastric mucosa in approximately 50% of the world's population.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

(1) Background: Posttranslational protein modifications have been demonstrated to change protein allergenicity. Previously, it was reported that pretreatment with highly nitrated food proteins induced a tolerogenic immune response in an experimental mouse model and in human immune cells. Here, we investigated a possible therapeutic effect of modified proteins and evaluated the safety of oral exposure to highly nitrated proteins in an experimental food allergy model.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Infection with affects almost half of the world's population and is a major cause of stomach cancer. Although immune cells react strongly to this gastric bacterium, is still one of the rare pathogens that can evade elimination by the host and cause chronic inflammation. In the present study, we characterized the inflammatory response of primary human monocytes to repeated infection and their responsiveness to an ensuing bacterial stimulus.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin B (SpeB) is a cysteine protease expressed during group A streptococcal infection that represents a major virulence factor. Although subject to several studies, its role during infection is still under debate, and its proteolytic properties remain insufficiently characterized. Here, we revisited this protease through a set of complementary approaches relying on state of-the-art HPLC-MS methods.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Innate immune memory, the ability of innate cells to react in a more protective way to secondary challenges, is induced by exposure to infectious and other exogeous and endogenous agents. Engineered nanoparticles are particulate exogenous agents that, as such, could trigger an inflammatory reaction in monocytes and macrophages and could therefore be also able to induce innate memory. Here, we have evaluated the capacity of engineered gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to induce a memory response or to modulate the memory responses induced by microbial agents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dendritic cells (DCs) shape immune responses by influencing T-cell activation. Thus, they are considered both an interesting model for studying nano-immune interactions and a promising target for nano-based biomedical applications. However, the accentuated ability of nanoparticles (NPs) to interact with biomolecules may have an impact on DC function that poses an unexpected risk of unbalanced immune reactions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chronic inflammation contributes to the development and progression of various tumors. Especially where the inflammation is mediated by cells of the innate immune system, the NLRP3 inflammasome plays an important role, as it senses and responds to a variety of exogenous and endogenous pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). The NLRP3 inflammasome is responsible for the maturation and secretion of the proinflammatory cytokines interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and IL-18 and for the induction of a type of inflammatory cell death known as pyroptosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a gram-negative bacterium that chronically infects approximately 50% of the world's human population. While in most cases the infection remains asymptomatic, 10% of infected individuals develop gastric pathologies and 1-3% progress to gastric cancer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding, which factors determine the immunogenicity and immune polarizing properties of proteins, is an important prerequisite for designing better vaccines and immunotherapeutics. While extrinsic immune modulatory factors such as pathogen associated molecular patterns are well-understood, far less is known about the contribution of protein inherent features. Protein fold-stability represents such an intrinsic feature contributing to immunogenicity and immune polarization by influencing the amount of peptide-MHC II complexes (pMHCII).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Persistent infections with the bacterial group-I carcinogen Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) have been associated with a broad range of gastric disorders, including gastritis, ulceration, gastric cancer or mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma. Pathogenesis of H.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Interleukin-31 (IL-31) is a Th2 cell-derived cytokine that has been closely linked to pruritic skin inflammation. More recently, enhanced IL-31 serum levels have also been observed in patients with allergic rhinitis and allergic asthma. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to unravel the contribution of IL-31 to allergen-induced lung inflammation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Human skin contains a population of memory T cells that supports tissue homeostasis and provides protective immunity. The study of human memory T cells is often restricted to in vitro studies and to human PBMC serving as primary cell source. Because the tissue environment impacts the phenotype and function of memory T cells, it is crucial to study these cells within their tissue.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF