Asymmetric bispecific antibodies are a rapidly expanding therapeutic antibody class, designed to recognize two different target epitopes concurrently to achieve novel functions not available with normal antibodies. Many therapeutic designs require an...
The mechanism of antibody-mediated protection is a major focus of HIV-1 vaccine development and a significant issue in the control of viremia. Virus neutralization, Fc-mediated effector function, or both, are major mechanisms of antibody-mediated pro...
Many bacterial pathogens utilize translocated virulence factors called effectors to successfully infect their host. Within the host cell, effector proteins facilitate pathogen replication through subversion of host cell targets and processes. Legione...
Macrophages represent one of the first lines of host immune defences against the invasion of pathogenic bacteria. Many receptors, immune signalling pathways and cellular processes in macrophages, including Toll-like receptors, Nod-like receptors, pha...
Biotrophic fungi have to infect their host to obtain nutrients and must establish an interaction with the host to complete their life cycle. In this process, effectors play important roles in manipulating the host’s immune system to avoid being attac...
The shoot blight of Bambusa pervariabilis × Dendrocalamopsis grandis caused by Arthrinium phaeospermum made bamboo die in a large area, resulting in serious ecological and economic losses. Dual RNA-seq was used to sequence and analyze the trans...
mRNA vaccines have demonstrated considerable efficacy and safety against SARS-CoV-2, limiting the pandemic burden worldwide. The emergence of new variants of concern and the decline in neutralizing activity observed several weeks post-vaccination rei...
Whilst the importance of keratinocytes as a first-line defense has been widely investigated, little is known about their interactions with non-resident immune cells. In this study, the impact of human keratinocytes on T cell effector functions was an...
The generation of a potent vaccine for the prevention and/or control of HIV-1 has been unsuccessful to date, despite decades of research. Existing evidence from both infected individuals and clinical trials support a role for non-neutralizing or weak...
Fc-mediated effector functions of antibodies, including antibody-dependent cytotoxicity (ADCC), have been shown to contribute to vaccine-induced protection from HIV-1 infection, especially those directed against non-neutralizing, CD4 inducible (CD4i)...
Background/Objectives: Monoclonal antibodies have successfully been used for a variety of indications. Many therapeutic antibodies are IgG1 and elicit effector functions as part of their mechanism of action. It is well known that aggregate levels sho...
We have previously reported that the female genital tract (FGT) of Beninese HIV highly-exposed seronegative (HESN) commercial sex workers (CSWs), presented elevated frequencies of a myeloid HLA-DR+CD14+CD11c+ population presenting “tolerogenic&...
Protein functional effector (pfe)RNAs were introduced in 2015 as PIWI-interacting-like small noncoding (nc)RNAs and were later categorized as a novel group based on being 2′-O-methylated at their 3′-end, directly binding and affecting pro...
Planar multi-loop mechanisms often generate a large number of non-isomorphic candidate topological graphs during automatic synthesis, making it difficult to efficiently identify configurations that satisfy engineering-oriented functional requirements...
Immune surveillance by natural killer (NK) cells and their recruitment to sites of inflammation renders them susceptible to viral infection, potentially modulating their effector function. Here, we analyzed innate RNA receptor signaling in NK cells d...
Cytotoxic CD8 T lymphocytes are crucial in antiviral immune responses. However, their recruitment to infection sites renders them at risk of viral infection, which could affect their effector activity. CD8 T lymphocytes express RIG-I, which detects c...
Background/Objectives: Whether individual endogenous corticosteroids exert distinct immunoregulatory effects on CD8+ T cells remains poorly understood. We investigated how deoxycorticosterone (DOC) affects CD8+ T cell state and function. Methods: Pri...
Phytoplasmas are bacterial pathogens that live mainly in the phloem of their plant hosts. They dramatically manipulate plant development by secreting effector proteins that target developmental proteins of their hosts. Traditionally, the effects of i...
The complement system, an effector arm of the innate immune system that plays a critical role in tissue inflammation, the elimination of pathogens and the clearance of dead cells and cell debris, has emerged as a regulator of many processes in the ce...
Monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapy has rapidly changed the field of cancer therapy. In 1997, the CD20-targeting mAb rituximab was the first mAb to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treatment of cancer. Within two decades,...
(1) Background: Modeling signaling cascades is helpful in deciphering the structure and interactions within and between cascades, and testing our understanding of the cascades by using the models to make predictions and suggesting experiments to eval...
Plants are colonized by various fungi with both pathogenic and beneficial lifestyles. One type of colonization strategy is through the secretion of effector proteins that alter the plant’s physiology to accommodate the fungus. The oldest plant...
Verticillium wilt, caused by Verticillium dahliae, is a devastating disease for many important crops, including cotton. Kiwellins (KWLs), a group of cysteine-rich proteins synthesized in many plants, have been shown to be involved in response to vari...
Antibodies play a crucial role in host defense against viruses, both by preventing infection and by controlling viral replication. Besides their capacity to neutralize viruses, antibodies also exert their antiviral effects by crystallizable fragment...
Since the approval of the first monoclonal antibody (mAb) in 1986, a huge effort has been made to guarantee safety and efficacy of therapeutic mAbs. As of July 2021, 118 mAbs are approved for the European market for a broad range of clinical indicati...
Influenza viruses are one of the most prevalent respiratory pathogens known to humans and pose a significant threat to global public health each year. Annual influenza epidemics are responsible for 3–5 million infections worldwide and approximately 5...
Recalcitrant rice blast disease is caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, which has a significant negative economic reverberation on crop productivity. In order to induce the disease onto the host, M. oryzae positively generates many types of small secreted p...
Antibodies provide critical protective immunity against COVID-19, and the Fc-mediated effector functions and mucosal antibodies also contribute to the protection. To expand the characterization of humoral immunity stimulated by subunit protein–...
Aquaporin-5 (AQP5), belonging to the aquaporins (AQPs) family of transmembrane water channels, facilitates osmotically driven water flux across biological membranes and the movement of hydrogen peroxide and CO2. Various mechanisms have been shown to...
Antibodies against inhibitory immune checkpoint molecules (ICPMs), referred to as immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), have gained a prominent place in cancer therapy. Several ICIs in clinical use have been engineered to be devoid of effector functio...
Immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies are well known for their role in mediating allergic reactions, and their powerful effector functions activated through binding to Fc receptors FcεRI and FcεRII/CD23. Structural studies of IgE-Fc alone...
Wheat leaf rust fungus is an obligate parasitic fungus that can absorb nutrients from its host plant through haustoria and secrete effector proteins into host cells. The effector proteins are crucial factors for pathogenesis as well as targets for ho...
Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) have emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy for HIV-1 prevention and treatment, but their efficacy extends far beyond their direct antiviral capacity. In addition to traditional Fab-mediated neutralization...
Previous work examining the therapeutic efficacy of adjunct thymosin beta 4 (Tβ4) to ciprofloxacin for ocular infectious disease has revealed markedly reduced inflammation (inflammatory mediators and innate immune cells) with increased activatio...
Previous studies have reported that Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) infection could activate STING-related signaling pathways in vitro, but the role of STING in EV-A71 infection in vivo and the associated immune regulatory mechanisms remain unclear. Here, w...
Effector proteins are key virulence factors of obligate parasitic fungi during infection. Wheat leaf rust by Puccinia triticina is a widespread destructive disease drastically limiting wheat production, while the biological role of its effector is st...
Additional therapeutic targets suitable for boosting anti-tumor effector responses have been found inside effector CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. It is likely that future treatment options will combine surface receptor and intracellular protein targets. Util...
The primary aim of this study was to reveal the effects of end-effector robot-assisted gait training (RAGT) on motor function, proprioception, balance, and gait ability in patients with incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI). The secondary aim was to de...
The design of an upper limb rehabilitation robot for post-stroke patients is considered a benchmark problem regarding improving functionality and ensuring better human–robot interaction (HRI). Existing upper limb robots perform either joint-based exe...
Spacer or co-stimulatory components in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) design influence CAR T cell effector function. Few preclinical mouse models optimally support CAR candidate pre-selection for clinical development. Here we use a model in which mu...
Background/Objectives: High-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC) represents the most frequent subtype of epithelial ovarian cancer (OC) and is associated with malignant ascitic fluid (MAF), which fosters a pro-inflammatory microenvironment that supports tum...
Multiple factors influence immunoglobulin G glycosylation, which in turn affect the glycoproteins’ function on eliciting an anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory response. It is prudent to underscore these processes when considering the use of immuno...
Antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADE) is clinically relevant to Dengue virus (DENV) infection and poses a major risk to the application of monoclonal antibody (mAb)-based therapeutics against related flaviviruses such as the Zika virus (Z...
Phytopythium vexans is a plant pathogen responsible for a variety of destructive diseases in crops worldwide. This includes patch canker, damping-off, root, and crown rots in economically important crops, such as apple, pear, grapevine, citrus, avoca...
Engineering of fragment crystallizable (Fc) domains of therapeutic immunoglobulin (IgG) antibodies to eliminate their immune effector functions while retaining other Fc characteristics has numerous applications, including blocking antigens on Fc gamm...
Activation of the humoral immune system is initiated when antibodies recognize an antigen and trigger effector functions through the interaction with Fc engaging molecules. The most abundant immunoglobulin isotype in serum is Immunoglobulin G (IgG),...
Natural killer (NK) cells are essential in the early immune response against viral infections, in particular through clearance of virus-infected cells. In return, viruses have evolved multiple mechanisms to evade NK cell-mediated viral clearance. Sev...
Granulocytes (neutrophils, eosinophils, and basophils) are the most abundant circulating cells in the innate immune system. Circulating granulocytes, primarily neutrophils, can cross the endothelial barrier and activate various effector mechanisms to...
A variety of Fc domain engineering approaches for abrogating the effector functions of mAbs exists. To address some of the limitations of the current Fc domain silencing approaches, we are exploring a less commonly considered option which relies on t...
Marburg virus (MARV), a filovirus, was first identified in 1967 in Marburg, Germany, and Belgrade, former Yugoslavia. Since then, MARV has caused sporadic outbreaks of human disease with high case fatality rates in parts of Africa, with the largest o...
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