...tion, it recognizes microbial moieties, activates complement and facilitates recognition by phagocytes. Thus, this long pentraxin behaves as a bona fide ante-antibody. In this perspective, it is interesting that IL-10 stimulates B cell differentiation and antibody production. Thus IL-10 stimulates t...

...ta from our studies demonstrating that DC and other cell types can be activated in vitro by transfection with single stranded viral or synthetic RNA containing 5’ phosphates. This form of activation is mediated by the helicase RIG-I and leads to production of high levels of type I IFNs. Notably, t...

...+ regulatory T cells (Treg) are depleted in vivo prior to immunization. These findings are further substantiated in tumor protection experiments and hold convincing evidence for the merit of Treg cell depletion prior to immunization with mRNA-electroporated DC. These results facilitate the preparat...

...produced cell type specific cytokines. CD8+ myeloid DCs “cross-presented” exogeneous Ags (Ovalbumin) while pDCs produce type 1 Interferons. The efficacy of CpG-DNA-Ag complexed for cross-presentation of Ag by DCs was analyzed in vivo. Primary and secondary CTL response against the C8 T cell epit...

...ave obtained data on intestinal DC subsets all of which can acquire scrapie ME7 form the intestinal lumen and transport it via lymph. In current studies we are examining the effects of indomethacin-induced small intestinal inflammation on both intestinal DC biology and on scrapie uptake, transport...

...ve properties. We found changes in regulatory T cells populations as well as in the “myeloid suppressor cells”. Our preliminary data suggest that two populations of regulatory T cells coexist (natural and induced) in progressing tumors, and that a population of Gr1+ cells may affect tumor resist...

...that regulatory T cells have a stronger impact on immune responses against weakly immunogenic or auto-antigen (P1A). Treg are detected in growing P815 tumor and there is some evidence that 2 regulatory T cells develop sequentially. T cell activation was monitored by tetramer staining and in vivo CTL...

...timulation of plasmacytoid pDC induced the cytokines IL-12p40, IL-12p70, TNF and IFN-alpha. Our data suggests that at this stage of infection plasmacytoid pDC may play only a limited role in protection against MTb infection. Our data however, does not address the possibility that plasmacytoid pDC ma...

...the cognate CTL antigen. In tumors that do not express the CTL cognate antigen, we observe peripheral infiltration by CTLs, but the lymphocytes neither stop moving, nor kill tumor cells or infiltrate tumors deeply. Antigen expression by tumor cells therefore determines both CTL motility within the t...

... bacteria and protozoa can invade dendritic cells (DC), it is not clear whether infected DC process pathogen-derived antigen and stimulate antigen-specific CD4+ T cells in vivo. To address this issue and obtain data on this question, we have infected susceptible BALB/c (H2-d) mice with a recombinant...

...other haplotypes. Thus, the 2C44 mAb allows for the detection of DC which captured and processed LACK in vivo. We next attempted to characterize the DC which carried I-Ad/LACK complexes at the cell surface in LACK-immunized BALB/c mice. Two different populations of DC, could thus be identified both ...

...lating CD4 and CD8 T cell responses with the transfected DCs, matured for 2 days in poly I:C. The activation status of CD4+/CD25+ T reg in TIL in prostate cancer has been analysed. A higher frequency of CD4+/CD25+/GITR+/ICOS+/FoxP3+ cells in the areas with malignancy as compared to normal prostate t...

...nt tumors from growing out. By depleting CD4+ and CD8+ cell populations prior to tumor challenge, CD8+ cells were identified as the main effector cells involved. Importantly, DCs pre-loaded in vitro with ICs are at least 1000-fold more potent than ICs injected directly into mice or DCs loaded with t...

...ave obtained data addressing the effectiveness of TLR ligand-long peptide conjugates in vivo by either direct vaccination or ex vivo DC loading prior to vaccination. Both approaches show similar effectiveness in CTL priming suggesting that TLRL-peptide conjugates efficiently target DC in vivo.

...tic anti-CD40 mAb with respect to CD8(+) CTL efflux and tumor eradication. Together these results indicate that dendritic cells, depending on their activation state, orchestrate the outcome of CTL-mediated immunity against tumors, leading either to an ineffective immune response or potent antitumor ...

...olyclonal T cells and P14 T cells showed the same differentiation patterns that were different from those of OT-1 T cells responding to Listeria-OVA. These results suggest that CD8 differentiation is dependent of the infectious context, rather than of the TCR specificity. Our present studies aim t...

...lasmacytoid and conventional DCs suggest that regeneration might proceed through common DC-restricted developmental intermediates. By selecting for cytokine receptor expression relevant to DC development, we were able to identify highly cycling Lin–c-KitintFlt3+M-CSFR+ cells with a distinct gene-e...

... treatment with rIFNalpha at birth induced both FL and plasmacytoid DC (pDC) that resulted in enhanced resistance against HSV-1 at day 7. In contrast, in mice lacking FL, IFNalpha treatment at birth did not influence splenic cell composition and had no effect on viral protection. The transfer of pDC...

...+ regulatory T cells (Treg), ii) markedly enhance the magnitude of secondary but not primary CTL responsesinduced by DEX vaccines, iii) synergize with DEX in therapy but not prophylaxis tumor models. Therefore, therapeutic vaccines such as DEX aimed at boosting tumor-primed effector T cells coul...

...iNKT cell-agonist alpha-GalCer and MPL, a detoxified version of LPS that signals through TLR4. This combination treatment stimulates antigen-specific T and B cell responses that are greater than those elicited with alpha-GalCer or MPL alone. Over the next few months we intend to extend these results...