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Recent Advances in the Development of Protein- and Peptide-Based Subunit Vaccines against Tuberculosis.
Bellini, C, Horváti, K
Cells. 2020;(12)
Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) herald of the "End TB Strategy" has defined goals and targets for tuberculosis prevention, care, and control to end the global tuberculosis endemic. The emergence of drug resistance and the relative dreadful consequences in treatment outcome has led to increased awareness on immunization against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). However, the proven limited efficacy of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), the only licensed vaccine against Mtb, has highlighted the need for alternative vaccines. In this review, we seek to give an overview of Mtb infection and failure of BCG to control it. Afterward, we focus on the protein- and peptide-based subunit vaccine subtype, examining the advantages and drawbacks of using this design approach. Finally, we explore the features of subunit vaccine candidates currently in pre-clinical and clinical evaluation, including the antigen repertoire, the exploited adjuvanted delivery systems, as well as the spawned immune response.
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Role of Glutathionylation in Infection and Inflammation.
Checconi, P, Limongi, D, Baldelli, S, Ciriolo, MR, Nencioni, L, Palamara, AT
Nutrients. 2019;(8)
Abstract
Glutathionylation, that is, the formation of mixed disulfides between protein cysteines and glutathione (GSH) cysteines, is a reversible post-translational modification catalyzed by different cellular oxidoreductases, by which the redox state of the cell modulates protein function. So far, most studies on the identification of glutathionylated proteins have focused on cellular proteins, including proteins involved in host response to infection, but there is a growing number of reports showing that microbial proteins also undergo glutathionylation, with modification of their characteristics and functions. In the present review, we highlight the signaling role of GSH through glutathionylation, particularly focusing on microbial (viral and bacterial) glutathionylated proteins (GSSPs) and host GSSPs involved in the immune/inflammatory response to infection; moreover, we discuss the biological role of the process in microbial infections and related host responses.
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ImmunomeBrowser: a tool to aggregate and visualize complex and heterogeneous epitopes in reference proteins.
Dhanda, SK, Vita, R, Ha, B, Grifoni, A, Peters, B, Sette, A
Bioinformatics (Oxford, England). 2018;(22):3931-3933
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Abstract
MOTIVATION Datasets that are derived from different studies (e.g. MHC ligand elution, MHC binding, B/T cell epitope screening etc.) often vary in terms of experimental approaches, sizes of peptides tested, including partial and or nested overlapping peptides and in the number of donors tested. RESULTS We present a customized application of the Immune Epitope Database's ImmunomeBrowser tool, which can be used to effectively aggregate and visualize heterogeneous immunological data. User provided peptide sets and associated response data is mapped to a user-provided protein reference sequence. The output consists of tables and figures representing the aggregated data represented by a Response Frequency score and associated estimated confidence interval. This allows the user to visualizing regions associated with dominant responses and their boundaries. The results are presented both as a user interactive javascript based web interface and a tabular format in a selected reference sequence. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION The 'ImmunomeBrowser' has been a longstanding feature of the IEDB (http://www.iedb.org). The present application extends the use of this tool to work with user-provided datasets, rather than the output of IEDB queries. This new server version of the ImmunomeBrowser is freely accessible at http://tools.iedb.org/immunomebrowser/.
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Effects of protein-carbohydrate supplementation on immunity and resistance training outcomes: a double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial.
Naclerio, F, Larumbe-Zabala, E, Ashrafi, N, Seijo, M, Nielsen, B, Allgrove, J, Earnest, CP
European journal of applied physiology. 2017;(2):267-277
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Abstract
PURPOSE To examine the impact of ingesting hydrolyzed beef protein, whey protein, and carbohydrate on resistance training outcomes, body composition, muscle thickness, blood indices of health and salivary human neutrophil peptides (HNP1-3), as reference of humoral immunity followed an 8-week resistance training program in college athletes. METHODS Twenty-seven recreationally physically active males and females (n = 9 per treatment) were randomly assigned to one of the three groups: hydrolyzed beef protein, whey protein, or non-protein isoenergetic carbohydrate. Treatment consisted of ingesting 20 g of supplement, mixed with orange juice, once a day immediately post-workout or before breakfast on non-training days. Measurements were performed pre- and post-intervention on total load (kg) lifted at the first and last workout, body composition (via plethysmography) vastus medialis thickness (mm) (via ultrasonography), and blood indices of health. Salivary HNP1-3 were determined before and after performing the first and last workout. RESULTS Salivary concentration and secretion rates of the HNP1-3 decreased in the beef condition only from pre-first-workout (1.90 ± 0.83 μg/mL; 2.95 ± 2.83 μg/min, respectively) to pre-last-workout (0.92 ± 0.63 μg/mL, p = 0.025, d = 1.03; 0.76 ± 0.74 μg/min, p = 0.049, d = 0.95), and post-last-workout (0.95 ± 0.60 μg/mL, p = 0.032, d = 1.00; 0.59 ± 0.52 μg/min, p = 0.027, d = 1.02). No other significant differences between groups were observed. CONCLUSIONS Supplementation with a carbohydrate-protein beverage may support resistance training outcomes in a comparable way as the ingestion of only carbohydrate. Furthermore, the ingestion of 20 g of hydrolyzed beef protein resulted in a decreased level and secretion rates of the HNP1-3 from baseline with no negative effect on blood indices of health.
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Classification epitopes in groups based on their protein family.
Kozlova, E, Viart, B, de Avila, R, Felicori, L, Chavez-Olortegui, C
BMC bioinformatics. 2015;(Suppl 19):S7
Abstract
BACKGROUND The humoral immune system response is based on the interaction between antibodies and antigens for the clearance of pathogens and foreign molecules. The interaction between these proteins occurs at specific positions known as antigenic determinants or B-cell epitopes. The experimental identification of epitopes is costly and time consuming. Therefore the use of in silico methods, to help discover new epitopes, is an appealing alternative due the importance of biomedical applications such as vaccine design, disease diagnostic, anti-venoms and immune-therapeutics. However, the performance of predictions is not optimal been around 70% of accuracy. Further research could increase our understanding of the biochemical and structural properties that characterize a B-cell epitope. RESULTS We investigated the possibility of linear epitopes from the same protein family to share common properties. This hypothesis led us to analyze physico-chemical (PCP) and predicted secondary structure (PSS) features of a curated dataset of epitope sequences available in the literature belonging to two different groups of antigens (metalloproteinases and neurotoxins). We discovered statistically significant parameters with data mining techniques which allow us to distinguish neurotoxin from metalloproteinase and these two from random sequences. After a five cross fold validation we found that PCP based models obtained area under the curve values (AUC) and accuracy above 0.9 for regression, decision tree and support vector machine. CONCLUSIONS We demonstrated that antigen's family can be inferred from properties within a single group of linear epitopes (metalloproteinases or neurotoxins). Also we discovered the characteristics that represent these two epitope groups including their similarities and differences with random peptides and their respective amino acid sequence. These findings open new perspectives to improve epitope prediction by considering the specific antigen's protein family. We expect that these findings will help to improve current computational mapping methods based on physico-chemical due it's potential application during epitope discovery.
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Differential seminal plasma proteome according to semen retrieval in men with spinal cord injury.
da Silva, BF, Souza, GH, lo Turco, EG, Del Giudice, PT, Soler, TB, Spaine, DM, Borrelli Junior, M, Gozzo, FC, Pilau, EJ, Garcia, JS, et al
Fertility and sterility. 2013;(4):959-69
Abstract
OBJECTIVE To evaluate protein expression profile and to quantify proteins present in seminal plasma from men with spinal cord injury (SCI) and healthy men without SCI. DESIGN Experimental study. SETTING University hospital. PATIENT(S): Twelve SCI patients divided into two groups, six who underwent electroejaculation (EEJ) and six who underwent penile vibratory stimulation (PVS); and ten control subjects presenting normal sperm motility and concentration. INTERVENTION(S): EEJ and PVS. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): The seminal plasma protein profile was analyzed by two proteomic strategies: data-independent label-free quantitative proteomics (MS(E)) and two-dimensional sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D SDS-PAGE). RESULT(S): A total of 638 different proteins were identified by MS(E) and 18 by 2D SDS-PAGE followed by tandem mass spectrometry. Interactome analysis showed key reproductive biologic processes-insemination, sperm and oocyte fusion, and acrosome reaction-related to all groups, as were triglyceride stimuli. Processes related to actin and muscle function and to iron oxidation, transportation, and homeostasis were found only in the EEJ and PVS groups; response to hydrogen peroxide and increased immune response was found only in the PVS group. CONCLUSION(S): This study was able to demonstrate differential protein expression among control, PVS, and EEJ groups; SCI is responsible for alterations in seminal plasma protein profile leading to a deviation from homeostasis; proteins reported in both PVS and EEJ groups correlate with the pathophysiology of SCI-related infertility.
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Genetic polymorphisms in vitamin D receptor, vitamin D-binding protein, Toll-like receptor 2, nitric oxide synthase 2, and interferon-gamma genes and its association with susceptibility to tuberculosis.
Leandro, AC, Rocha, MA, Cardoso, CS, Bonecini-Almeida, MG
Brazilian journal of medical and biological research = Revista brasileira de pesquisas medicas e biologicas. 2009;(4):312-22
Abstract
Mycobacterium tuberculosis kills more people than any other single pathogen, with an estimated one-third of the world's population being infected. Among those infected, only 10% will develop the disease. There are several demonstrations that susceptibility to tuberculosis is linked to host genetic factors in twins, family and associated-based case control studies. In the past years, there has been dramatic improvement in our understanding of the role of innate and adaptive immunity in the human host defense to tuberculosis. To date, attention has been paid to the role of genetic host and parasitic factors in tuberculosis pathogenesis mainly regarding innate and adaptive immune responses and their complex interactions. Many studies have focused on the candidate genes for tuberculosis susceptibility ranging from those expressed in several cells from the innate or adaptive immune system such as Toll-like receptors, cytokines (TNF-alpha, TGF-beta, IFN-gamma, IL-1b, IL-1RA, IL-12, IL-10), nitric oxide synthase and vitamin D, both nuclear receptors and their carrier, the vitamin D-binding protein (VDBP). The identification of possible genes that can promote resistance or susceptibility to tuberculosis could be the first step to understanding disease pathogenesis and can help to identify new tools for treatment and vaccine development. Thus, in this mini-review, we summarize the current state of investigation on some of the genetic determinants, such as the candidate polymorphisms of vitamin D, VDBP, Toll-like receptor, nitric oxide synthase 2 and interferon-gamma genes, to generate resistance or susceptibility to M. tuberculosis infection.
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The requirements of protein & amino acid during acute & chronic infections.
Kurpad, AV
The Indian journal of medical research. 2006;(2):129-48
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Abstract
Nutrition and infection interact with each other in a synergistic vicious cycle, leading to an adverse nutritional status and increased susceptibility to infection. Infectious episodes result in hypermetabolism and a negative nitrogen balance which is modulated by hormones, cytokines and other pro-inflammatory mediators, and is compounded by a reduced food intake. The extent of the negative nitrogen balance varies with the type of infection and its duration; however, it is reasonable to suggest that the loss of body protein could be minimized by the provision of dietary nitrogen, although anorexia will limit this. Further, distinctions need to be made about the provision of nutrients or protein during the catabolic and anabolic or recovery phase of the infection, since the capacity of the body to retain protein is enhanced in the anabolic recovery phase. Meeting the increased requirement for protein (and other nutrients) in infection does not imply a complete therapeutic strategy. Infections need to be treated appropriately, with nutrition as an adjunct to the treatment. Prior undernutrition could also impair the body's response to infection, although the weight of the evidence would suggest that this happens more particularly in oedematous undernutrition. In general, the amount of extra protein that would appear to be needed is of the order of 20-25 per cent of the recommended intake, for most infections. In acute infections, this is particularly relevant during the convalescence period. Community trials have suggested that lysine supplementation to the level required for normal daily nutriture, in predominantly wheat eating or potentially lysine deficient communities, improves immune function among other functional nutritional parameters; however, there is as yet insufficient evidence to suggest a specific requirement for amino acids in infections over and above the normal daily requirement as based on recent evidence. Some clinical studies that have showed benefits with specific amino acids through selected clinical outcomes, however, these do not provide enough evidence for a firm recommendation.