The FDA-approved tests for diagnosis of HIV exposure depend on detection of specific antibody in serum. HIV infection is missed in some individuals because they score seronegative by the standard clinical EIA and Western blot assays. This apparent immunological "silent" period following infection may last for months and has been reported to be as long as 3 years in rare cases. Is there truly a lack of an immune response or is there a more subtle, narrowly focused antibody response in these HIV-infected individuals which is not detected by the current tests? Using a nondenaturing serological assay (immunofluorescence of live infected T-cells), we found that each of four infected individuals "seronegative" by the standard tests did possess antibody against native HIV proteins expressed on infected cells. These antibodies reacting with native HIV antigenic epitopes were of the IgG isotype, they cross-reacted with many, but not all, of seven random HIV-1 isolates, and one of the sera immunoprecipitated HIV gp160 from NP-40-solubilized infected cells. These results show that seronegative, high-risk, infected individuals can actually be seropositive and that different types of assays using native antigenic epitopes may be required for screening. Implementation of these findings thus may decrease HIV transmission. These results also highlight the importance of protein conformation for many natural viral antigenic epitopes.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0042-6822(91)90441-d | DOI Listing |
Front Immunol
January 2025
Department of Botany and Microbiology, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Human rhinovirus C (HRV-C) is a significant contributor to respiratory tract infections in children and is implicated in asthma exacerbations across all age groups. Despite its impact, there is currently no licensed vaccine available for HRV-C. Here, we present a novel approach to address this gap by employing immunoinformatics techniques for the design of a multi-epitope-based vaccine against HRV-C.
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January 2025
Centro de Investigaciones Oncológicas (FUCA), Fundación Cáncer, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
VACCIMEL is a therapeutic cancer vaccine composed of four irradiated allogeneic human melanoma cell lines rationally selected to cover a wide range of melanoma tumor-associated antigens (TAA). We previously demonstrated that vaccination in the adjuvant setting prolonged the distant-metastasis-free survival of cutaneous melanoma patients and that T cells reactive to TAA and the patient's private neoantigens increased during treatment. However, immune responses directed to vaccine antigens that may arise from VACCIMEL's somatic mutations and human polymorphisms remain unexplored.
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January 2025
Adaptive Biotechnologies, Seattle, WA, United States.
Introduction: T cells are involved in the early identification and clearance of viral infections and also support the development of antibodies by B cells. This central role for T cells makes them a desirable target for assessing the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Methods: Here, we combined two high-throughput immune profiling methods to create a quantitative picture of the T-cell response to SARS-CoV-2.
Front Immunol
January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Guangdong Laboratory of Computational Biomedicine, Center for Cell Lineage Research, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
Background: Although immunoglobulin (Ig) alleles play a pivotal role in the antibody response to pathogens, research to understand their role in the humoral immune response is still limited.
Methods: We retrieved the germline sequences for the IGHV from the IMGT database to illustrate the amino acid polymorphism present within germline sequences of IGHV genes. We aassembled the sequences of IgM and IgD repertoire from 130 people to investigate the genetic variations in the population.
Thromb Haemost
January 2025
Department of Pediatrics, Nara Medical University, Kashihara, Nara, Japan.
Background: We previously identified a factor (F)VIII molecular defect associated with an R2159C mutation in the C1 domain (named "FVIII-Ise") together with undetectable FVIII antigen (FVIII:Ag) levels measured by two-site sandwich ELISA using an anti-C2 domain alloantibody (alloAb). The patient had clinically mild hemophilia A, and his reduced FVIII:C correlated with FVIII:Ag measured by ELISA using monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) with A2 and A2/B domain epitopes, suggesting that the R2159C mutation modified C2 domain antigenicity.
Aim: To investigate functional and structural characteristics of the FVIII-R2159C mutant.
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