Marzieh Holakuyee; Mohammad Hossein Yadegari; Zuhair Mohammad Hassan; Mansour Bayat; Ariyo Shahin Jafari; Mohsen Abolhassani; Abbas Ali Amini; Mehdi Mahdavi
Volume 7, Issue 3 , September 2010, , Pages 142-149
Abstract
Background: Candida albicans is one of the most important opportunistic pathogens that suppress immunologic mechanisms of the host. It is speculated that structural and secretory proteins of C. albicans have immunomodulatory effects in cancer. Objective: To evaluate the effects of C. albicans structural ...
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Background: Candida albicans is one of the most important opportunistic pathogens that suppress immunologic mechanisms of the host. It is speculated that structural and secretory proteins of C. albicans have immunomodulatory effects in cancer. Objective: To evaluate the effects of C. albicans structural and secreted proteins on intratumoral CD4/CD8 ratio as well as the survival rate in BALB/c tumor model. Methods: Structural and secretory proteins from C. albicans were isolated and examined for their effects on tumor growth and survival of adenocarcinoma bearing mice. Results: The results indicated that in mice treated with C. albicans structural protein, the survival rate significantly decreased compared with the control groups. Also, mice treated with secretory proteins showed a decrease in survival rate but it was not statistically significant (p>0.05). Investigating the frequency of tumor infiltrated CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes indicated that the percentages of tumor infiltrated CD4+ T lymphocytes in response to structural and secreted proteins were higher compared to the control groups. Conclusion: Our study suggests that C. albicans structural and secreted proteins modulate intratumor T lymphocyte infiltration.
Mehdi Mahdavi; Masoumeh Ebtekar; Fereidoun Mahboudi; Hamidreza Korram Khorshid; Fatemeh Rahbarizadeh; Kayhan Azadmanesh; Haydeh Darabi; Farzaneh Pourasgari; Zuhair Mohammad Hassan
Volume 6, Issue 4 , December 2009, , Pages 163-173
Abstract
Background: Cell mediated immunity, especially cytotoxic T cell responses against HIV-1 infection, plays a critical role in controlling viral replication and disease progres-sion. DNA vaccine is a novel technology which is known to stimulate strong cellular immune responses. Many DNA vaccines have been ...
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Background: Cell mediated immunity, especially cytotoxic T cell responses against HIV-1 infection, plays a critical role in controlling viral replication and disease progres-sion. DNA vaccine is a novel technology which is known to stimulate strong cellular immune responses. Many DNA vaccines have been tested for HIV infection but there is still no effective vaccine against this infection. Construction of a vaccine consisting of multiple conserved and immunogenic epitopes may increase vaccine efficacy. Objective: In the present study, a DNA vaccine candidate constructed from HIV-1 P24-Nef was evaluated and cellular immune responses were assessed in murine BALB/c model. Methods: HIV-1 P24-Nef gene was cloned in pCDNA3.1 expression vector. Mice were immunized with DNA construct and IL-4 and IFN-γ evaluation was per-formed using ELISPOT. Cytotoxicity response was evaluated with Granzyme B ELIS-POT assay and lymphocyte proliferation was evaluated with LTT assay. Results: Analysis of immune responses showed that, compared to control groups, the candidate vaccine induced production of higher levels of both IL-4 and IFN-γ (p<0.05). Cytotox-icity and lymphocyte proliferation responses of mice vaccinated with the candidate vac-cine were significantly increased compared to control groups (p<0.05). Conclusion: HIV-1 P24-Nef DNA construct displayed strong immunogenicity in a murine model.
Marzieh Ebrahimi; Zuhair Mohammad Hassan; Jamshid Hadjati; Parisa Hayat; Seyed Mohammad Moazzeni
Volume 6, Issue 3 , September 2009, , Pages 107-118
Abstract
Background: Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) is a primary mediator of immune regulation and might be required in the early stages of DC development from CD34+ cells. However, details of optimal timing of exposure to TNF-α in DC development process in monocytes or non-purified hematopoitic ...
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Background: Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) is a primary mediator of immune regulation and might be required in the early stages of DC development from CD34+ cells. However, details of optimal timing of exposure to TNF-α in DC development process in monocytes or non-purified hematopoitic cells are still lacking and clear benefits of this approach to the development of DCs remain to be validated. Objective: To evaluate the effect of early and late exposure to TNF-α on DC devel-opment from non-purified cord blood mononuclear cells. Methods: To define the ef-fects of early exposure to TNF-α on cord blood mononuclear cells, we cultured UCB-MNC in the presence of SCF, Flt3L, GM-CSF and IL-4 for 14 days and matured them for an extra 4 days. TNF-α was added on day 0, 7 and 14 in TNF-α + group, and only on day 14 in TNF-α - group where it was used only as a maturation factor. Results: Immediate exposure to TNF-α was shown to: (1) enhance the survival of cells in the first week of culture; (2) produce mature DCs with higher maturation markers (CD80, CD83, CD86 and HLA-DR); and (3) increase secretion of IL-12 by mature DCs. In contrast, delayed exposure to TNF-α stimulate mature DCs with less purity producing a high level of IL-10 and a low level of IL-12. Conclusion: We developed a simple, easy and cost effective method to generate DCs from non-fractionating mononuclear cells in this study. Also we confirm the presence of a large number of functional DCs under inflammatory conditions, where local concentrations of TNF-α were high.
Zahra Meshkat; Hoorieh Soleimajjahi; Mahmoud Mahmoudi; Zuhair Mohammad Hassan; Hessam Mirshahabi; Mojtaba Meshkat; Maryam Kheirandish
Abstract
Background: Cervical cancer is the most prevalent tumor in developing countries and the second most frequent cancer among female population worldwide. Specific human papillomaviruses and, most notably, HPV types 16 and 18 are recognized as being caus-ally associated with cervical carcinomas. The early ...
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Background: Cervical cancer is the most prevalent tumor in developing countries and the second most frequent cancer among female population worldwide. Specific human papillomaviruses and, most notably, HPV types 16 and 18 are recognized as being caus-ally associated with cervical carcinomas. The early HPV type 16 genes, E6 and E7, di-rectly participate in the in vitro transformation of primary human keratinocytes and rep-resent an excellent target for immune therapy of HPV related disease. Objective: The aim of this study was the evaluation of the efficacy of a DNA vaccine containing human papillomaviruse type 16 E7 gene (Iranian isolate) in induction of CTL responses in an animal model. Methods: In this study, the expression vector containing HPV type 16 E7 gene was constructed and chosen as a model antigen in the development of a thera-peutic DNA vaccine in an animal model. CTL responses, cytokine assay, lymphocyte stimulation test, CD4 and CD8 staining and flowcytometry were done for evaluating of the immune responses. Results: Our findings indicate that the target DNA vaccine can induce an E7-specific CTL response, which is important in the lysis of infected tumor cells, compared to negative control (p<0.005) after in vivo immunization in the mouse system. Conclusion: The developed vaccine may be promising as an anti-cancer vac-cine.