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Institution

Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies

NonprofitSan Diego, California, United States
About: Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies is a nonprofit organization based out in San Diego, California, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: T cell & Antigen. The organization has 2323 authors who have published 2217 publications receiving 112618 citations.


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Patent
17 Nov 2006
TL;DR: In this paper, a system, method and kit for processing an original image of biological material to identify certain components of a biological object by locating the biological object in the image, enhancing the image by sharpening components of interest in the object, and applying a contour-finding function to the enhanced image to create contour mask.
Abstract: A system, method and kit for processing an original image of biological material to identify certain components of a biological object by locating the biological object in the image, enhancing the image by sharpening components of interest in the object, and applying a contour-finding function to the enhanced image to create a contour mask. The contour mask may be processed to yield a segmented image divided by structural units of the biological material.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Encapsulating antigens in PLGA nanoparticles offers unique advantages such as higher efficiency of antigen loading, prolonged presentation of the antigENS, prevention of peptide degradation, specific targeting of antigen to antigen presenting cells, improved shelf life of theAntigens, and easy scale up for pharmaceutical production.
Abstract: Many peptide-based cancer vaccines have been tested in clinical trials with a limited success, mostly due to difficulties associated with peptide stability and delivery, resulting in inefficient antigen presentation. Therefore, the development of suitable and efficient vaccine carrier systems remains a major challenge. To address this issue, we have engineered polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) nanoparticles incorporating: (i) two MHC class I-restricted clinically-relevant peptides, (ii) a MHC class II-binding peptide, and (iii) a non-classical MHC class I-binding peptide. We formulated the nanoparticles utilizing a double emulsion-solvent evaporation technique and characterized their surface morphology, size, zeta potential and peptide content. We also loaded human and murine dendritic cells (DC) with the peptide-containing nanoparticles and determined their ability to present the encapsulated peptide antigens and to induce tumor-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) in vitro. We confirmed that the nanoparticles are not toxic to either mouse or human dendritic cells, and do not have any effect on the DC maturation. We also demonstrated a significantly enhanced presentation of the encapsulated peptides upon internalization of the nanoparticles by DC, and confirmed that the improved peptide presentation is actually associated with more efficient generation of peptide-specific CTL and T helper cell responses. Encapsulating antigens in PLGA nanoparticles offers unique advantages such as higher efficiency of antigen loading, prolonged presentation of the antigens, prevention of peptide degradation, specific targeting of antigens to antigen presenting cells, improved shelf life of the antigens, and easy scale up for pharmaceutical production. Therefore, these findings are highly significant to the development of synthetic vaccines, and the induction of CTL for adoptive immunotherapy.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Abstract: The Igh locus is controlled by cis -acting elements, including Eμ and the 3′ IgH regulatory region which flank the C region genes within the well-studied 3′ part of the locus. Although the presence of additional control elements has been postulated to regulate rearrangements of the V H gene array that extends to the 5′ end of the locus, the 5′ border of Igh and its flanking region have not been characterized. To facilitate the analysis of this unexplored region and to identify potential novel control elements, we physically mapped the most D-distal V H segments and scanned 46 kb of the immediate 5′ flanking region for DNase I hypersensitive sites. Our studies revealed a cluster of hypersensitive sites 30 kb upstream of the most 5′ V H gene. Detection of one site, HS1, is restricted to pro-B cell lines and HS1 is accessible to restriction enzyme digestion exclusively in normal pro-B cells, the stage defined by actively rearranging Igh-V loci. Sequence motifs within HS1 for PU.1, Pax5, and E2A bind these proteins in vitro and these factors are recruited to HS1 sequence only in pro-B cells. Transient transfection assays indicate that the Pax5 binding site is required for the repression of transcriptional activity of HS1-containing constructs. Thus, our characterization of the region 5′ of the V H gene cluster demonstrated the presence of a single cluster of DNase I hypersensitive sites within the 5′ flanking region, and identified a candidate Igh regulatory region defined by pro-B cell-specific hypersensitivity and interaction with factors implicated in regulating V(D)J recombination.

40 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A library of 68 brominated fragments was screened against a new crystal form of inhibited HIV‐1 protease in order to probe surface sites in soaking experiments and mapping the binding sites of a number of weaker binding Br‐fragments provides further insight into the nature of these surface pockets.
Abstract: A library of 68 brominated fragments was screened against a new crystal form of inhibited HIV-1 protease in order to probe surface sites in soaking experiments. Often, fragments are weak binders with partial occupancy, resulting in weak, difficult-to-fit electron density. The use of a brominated fragment library addresses this challenge, as bromine can be located unequivocally via anomalous scattering. Data collection was carried out in an automated fashion using AutoDrug at SSRL. Novel hits were identified in the known surface sites: 3-bromo-2,6-dimethoxybenzoic acid (Br6) in the flap site and 1-bromo-2-naphthoic acid (Br27) in the exosite, expanding the chemistry of known fragments for development of higher affinity potential allosteric inhibitors. At the same time, mapping the binding sites of a number of weaker binding Br-fragments provides further insight into the nature of these surface pockets.

39 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The retrieval, in public databases, of the native antigenic peptide SSX‐241–49, whose sequence is highly homologous to the ones deduced from the library screening, among the ones with the highest stimulatory score are encouraged.
Abstract: A novel approach for the identification of tumor antigen-derived sequences recognized by CD8+ cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTL) consists in using synthetic combinatorial peptide libraries. Here we have screened a library composed of 3.1×1011 nonapeptides arranged in a positional scanning format, in a cytotoxicity assay, to search the antigen recognized by melanoma-reactive CTL of unknown specificity. The results of this analysis enabled the identification of several optimal peptide ligands, as most of the individual nonapeptides deduced from the primary screeningwere efficiently recognized by the CTL. The results of the library screening were also analyzed with a mathematical approach based on a model of independent and additive contribution of individual amino acids to antigen recognition. This biometrical data analysis enabled the retrieval, in public databases, of the native antigenic peptide SSX-241–49, whose sequence is highly homologous to the ones deduced from the library screening, among the ones with the highest stimulatory score. These results underline the high predictive value of positional scanning synthetic combinatorial peptide library analysis and encourage its use for the identification of CTL ligands.

39 citations


Authors

Showing all 2327 results

NameH-indexPapersCitations
Eric J. Topol1931373151025
John R. Yates1771036129029
George F. Koob171935112521
Ian A. Wilson15897198221
Peter G. Schultz15689389716
Gerald M. Edelman14754569091
Floyd E. Bloom13961672641
Stuart A. Lipton13448871297
Benjamin F. Cravatt13166661932
Chi-Huey Wong129122066349
Klaus Ley12949557964
Nicholas J. Schork12558762131
Michael Andreeff11795954734
Susan L. McElroy11757044992
Peter E. Wright11544455388
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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Institution in previous years
YearPapers
20235
202210
202153
202060
201950
201842