15 results match your criteria: "The Ragon Institute of Mass General[Affiliation]"

Expanding the landscape of antibody discovery.

Cell Rep Methods

December 2024

Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; The Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA; The Koch Institute for Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. Electronic address:

Library:library screening technologies hold substantial promise for paired antibody:antigen discovery, but challenges have persisted. In this issue of Cell Reports Methods, Wagner et al. introduce a method that combines antibody-ribosome-mRNA complexes, antigen cell surface display, and single-cell RNA sequencing to successfully screen diverse antibody gene libraries against a library of viral receptor proteins.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Yeast cells exhibit a wider size range compared to mammalian cells, which makes it challenging to accurately determine single-cell gates during FACS.
  • * The report investigates different gating options for yeast display and proposes an optimized flow cytometry method to enhance the selection of single yeast cells, leading to improved results in yeast display studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: A key research priority for developing an HIV cure strategy is to define the viral dynamics and biomarkers associated with sustained post-treatment control. The ability to predict the likelihood of sustained post-treatment control or non-control could minimize the time off antiretroviral therapy (ART) for those destined to not control and anticipate longer periods off ART for those destined to control.

Methods: Mathematical modeling and machine learning were used to characterize virologic predictors of long-term virologic control using viral kinetics data from several studies in which participants interrupted ART.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Crosslinking of Ly6a metabolically reprograms CD8 T cells for cancer immunotherapy.

Nat Commun

September 2024

Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

T cell inhibitory mechanisms prevent autoimmune reactions, while cancer immunotherapy aims to remove these inhibitory signals. Chronic ultraviolet (UV) exposure attenuates autoimmunity through promotion of poorly understood immune-suppressive mechanisms. Here we show that mice with subcutaneous melanoma are not responsive to anti-PD1 immunotherapy following chronic UV irradiation, given prior to tumor injection, due to the suppression of T cell killing ability in skin-draining lymph nodes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Decoding LncRNA in COPD: Unveiling Prognostic and Diagnostic Power and Their Driving Role in Lung Cancer Progression.

Int J Mol Sci

August 2024

Division of Cancer Biology, Department of Medicine, MetroHealth Medical Center, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, 2500 MetroHealth Drive, Cleveland, OH 44109, USA.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer represent formidable challenges in global health, characterized by intricate pathophysiological mechanisms and multifaceted disease progression. This comprehensive review integrates insights from diverse perspectives to elucidate the intricate roles of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the pathogenesis of COPD and lung cancer, focusing on their diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic implications. In the context of COPD, dysregulated lncRNAs, such as NEAT1, TUG1, MALAT1, HOTAIR, and GAS5, emerge as pivotal regulators of genes involved in the disease pathogenesis and progression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Post-TB lung disease (PTLD) causes a significant burden of global disease. Fibrosis is a central component of many clinical features of PTLD. To date, we have a limited understanding of the mechanisms of TB-associated fibrosis and how these mechanisms are similar to or dissimilar from other fibrotic lung pathologies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tuberculosis (TB) is the world's deadliest infectious disease, with over 1.5 million deaths and 10 million new cases reported anually. The causative organism (Mtb) can take nearly 40 d to culture, a required step to determine the pathogen's antibiotic susceptibility.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Current prophylactic human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) vaccine research aims to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs). Membrane-proximal external region (MPER)-targeting bnAbs, such as 10E8, provide exceptionally broad neutralization, but some are autoreactive. Here, we generated humanized B cell antigen receptor knock-in mouse models to test whether a series of germline-targeting immunogens could drive MPER-specific precursors toward bnAbs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A key barrier to the development of vaccines that induce broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other viruses of high antigenic diversity is the design of priming immunogens that induce rare bnAb-precursor B cells. The high neutralization breadth of the HIV bnAb 10E8 makes elicitation of 10E8-class bnAbs desirable; however, the recessed epitope within gp41 makes envelope trimers poor priming immunogens and requires that 10E8-class bnAbs possess a long heavy chain complementarity determining region 3 (HCDR3) with a specific binding motif. We developed germline-targeting epitope scaffolds with affinity for 10E8-class precursors and engineered nanoparticles for multivalent display.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Germline-targeting (GT) HIV vaccine strategies are predicated on deriving broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) through multiple boost immunogens. However, as the recruitment of memory B cells (MBCs) to germinal centers (GCs) is inefficient and may be derailed by serum antibody-induced epitope masking, driving further B cell receptor (BCR) modification in GC-experienced B cells after boosting poses a challenge. Using humanized immunoglobulin knockin mice, we found that GT protein trimer immunogen N332-GT5 could prime inferred-germline precursors to the V3-glycan-targeted bnAb BG18 and that B cells primed by N332-GT5 were effectively boosted by either of two novel protein immunogens designed to have minimum cross-reactivity with the off-target V1-binding responses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recycled melanoma-secreted melanosomes regulate tumor-associated macrophage diversification.

EMBO J

September 2024

Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel.

Article Synopsis
  • Extracellular vesicles (EVs), particularly melanosomes secreted by melanocytes, are revealed as key players in intercellular communication, allowing intact transfer of melanin between cells.
  • These melanosomes gain distinct protein signatures within receiving cells and can be further passed to other cells, like macrophages, influencing their polarization towards either pro-tumor or immune cell types.
  • In melanoma, the presence of specific melanosome markers in macrophages correlates with disease aggressiveness and highlights the potential of targeting melanosome interactions to hinder melanoma progression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) targeting the hemagglutinin (HA) stem of influenza A viruses (IAVs) tend to be effective against either group 1 or group 2 viral diversity. In rarer cases, intergroup protective bnAbs can be generated by human antibody paratopes that accommodate the conserved glycan differences between the group 1 and group 2 stems. We applied germline-engaging nanoparticle immunogens to elicit a class of cross-group bnAbs from physiological precursor frequency within a humanized mouse model.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Antibodies are produced at high rates to provide immunoprotection, which puts pressure on the B cell translational machinery. Here, we identified a pattern of codon usage conserved across antibody genes. One feature thereof is the hyperutilization of codons that lack genome-encoded Watson-Crick transfer RNAs (tRNAs), instead relying on the posttranscriptional tRNA modification inosine (I34), which expands the decoding capacity of specific tRNAs through wobbling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * The study uses transgenic mice to mimic human antibody diversity and shows that an immunization strategy can enhance B cell memory targeting the conserved CD4 binding site on HIV.
  • * Findings suggest that allowing low affinity B cell clones to thrive facilitates the discovery of antibody targets, ultimately benefiting vaccine development against HIV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF