Delivery of a multivalent scrambled antigen vaccine induces broad spectrum immunity and protection against tuberculosis.

The development of effective anti-Tuberculosis (TB) vaccines is an important step towards improved control of TB in high burden countries. Subunit vaccines are advantageous in terms of safety, particularly in the context of high rates of HIV co-infection, but they must contain sufficient Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens to stimulate immunity in genetically diverse human populations. We have used a novel approach to develop a synthetic scrambled antigen vaccine (TB-SAVINE), comprised of overlapping, recombined peptides from four M.

Prime-boost strategies in DNA vaccines.

Induction of HIV-specific T-cell responses by vaccines may facilitate efficient control of HIV replication. Plasmid DNA vaccines and recombinant fowlpox virus (rFPV) vaccines are promising HIV-1 vaccine candidates, although delivering either vaccine alone may be insufficient to induce sufficient T-cell responses. A consecutive immunization strategy, known as "prime-boost," involving priming with DNA and boosting with rFPV vaccines encoding multiple common HIV antigens, is used to induce broad and high-level T-cell immunity and ameliorate AIDS in macaques.

Comparison of whole gene and whole virus scrambled antigen approaches for DNA prime and fowlpox virus boost HIV type 1 vaccine regimens in macaques.

T cell immunity plays a critical role in controlling HIV-1 viremia, and encoding a limited set of HIV-1 genes within DNA and poxvirus vectors can, when used sequentially, induce high levels of T cell immunity in primates. However, a limited breadth of T cell immunity exposes the host to potential infection with either genetically diverse HIV-1 strains or T cell escape variants of HIV-1. In an attempt to induce maximally broad immunity, we examined DNA and recombinant fowlpox virus (rFPV) vaccines encoding all HIV-1 genes derived from a global HIV-1 consensus sequence, but expressed as multiple overlapping scrambled 30-amino acid segments (scrambled antigen vaccines, or SAVINEs).

A recombinant vaccinia virus encoding inducible nitric oxide synthase is attenuated in vivo.

To investigate the role of nitric oxide during vaccinia virus (VV) infection of mice, a recombinant VV encoding the inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) gene (VV-HA-iNOS) was constructed. Following infection of immunocompromised or immunocompetent mice, the virus was highly attenuated compared with a control recombinant VV. Athymic and sublethally irradiated mice survived infection with 10(7) PFU of VV-HA-iNOS, a dose that resulted in uniform mortality in mice infected with the control recombinant VV.

Distribution of calcium ATPase in the sarcoplasmic reticulum of fast- and slow-twitch muscles determined with monoclonal antibodies.

Four monoclonal antibodies against the calcium ATPase in sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) of rabbit fast-twitch skeletal muscle were characterized using SDS-PAGE, Western blots and immunofluorescence. The ultrastructural distribution of the antigens was determined using post-embedding immunolabeling. The antibodies recognized the calcium ATPase in the SR but not in transverse (T-) tubule or plasma membranes.

Bistratified amacrine cells in the retina of the tammar wallaby--Macropus eugenii.

Cajal (1911) noted that bistratified amacrine cells were common in non mammalian species and extremely rare in the mammalian retina. An examination of the marsupial retina of the tammar wallaby, stained with a modified Golgi procedure, revealed that a particular type of bistratified amacrine was frequently impregnated with the silver stain. Flat mount and transverse sections showed that the morphology of this cell did not correspond with any of the species-dependent bistratified amacrines reproduced in Cajal's drawings.