Showing papers in "Current Opinion in Immunology in 1995"

TL;DR: The past two years have seen significant advances in understanding of IL-2 gene transcription, and the multiple roles of calcineurin are beginning to be appreciated.

TL;DR: The powerful techniques developed to study the genetics of Drosophila provide a unique opportunity to dissect the development and differentiation of this primordial immune system and may contribute to the understanding of the innate immune response in higher organisms.

TL;DR: The sum of allele-specific peptide-MHC interaction requirements can be described as a motif, characterized by number, spacing and specificities of anchors, as well as the more degenerate preferences at non-anchor positions within the nonamer stretches, useful for T-cell epitope predictions.

TL;DR: New fusion proteins with amino acid sequence homology to the pentraxins were described, and new insights were gained into pentraxin phylogeny, biosynthesis, ligands, complement activation, leukocyte reactivity and biological functions in vivo.

TL;DR: Two natural killer cell derived lymphokines show synergistic stimulatory activity in inducing Ig secretion in B cells stimulated by a multivalent ligand that mimics TI-2 antigens.

TL;DR: A subset of natural killer cells designated 'A-NK cells' has been characterized, and appear to be ideal surveillance cells, readily capable of upregulating antitumor functions in response to local activation signals.

TL;DR: Differential display and RNA arbitrary primed polmerase chain reaction are methods recently designed to identify and isolate differentially expressed genes and have been introduced to streamline the techniques.

TL;DR: Mouse NK1+ T cells constitute a special subset of alpha beta TCR+ T cell that express natural killer surface receptors and are thought to play an immunoregulatory role because of their unique ability to secrete IL-4 within minutes of primary activation.

TL;DR: This work has shown that suppression of self-reactive clones of immature thymocytes by activation-induced death in mature T cells is important in regulating peripheral immune responses.

TL;DR: Under appropriate conditions, IL-12 has therapeutic efficacy for promoting defense against a variety of pathogens, and for use as a vaccine adjuvant to enhance beneficial Th1 over detrimental Th2 lymphocyte responses.

TL;DR: A small part of the remaining immature B cells not reactive to autoantigens are selected to become mature, antigen-reactive sIgM+/sIgD+ B cells, and Molecules which might guide such positive selection of B cells still remain to be identified.

TL;DR: The results of several recent studies that have begun to define the mechanisms by which natural killer cells recognize their targets will be important in further elucidating their role in infectious disease.

TL;DR: Clonal elimination accounts for self-tolerance induction in the thymus and also affects mature T cells responding to exogenous antigens in the periphery.

TL;DR: Control of autoimmune disease may be achieved by procedures that regulate the relative contribution of Th1/Th2 CD4 T cells to an autoimmune response.

TL;DR: The past year has seen significant advances in determining the important structural-functional domains of the complement C5a anaphylatoxin receptor, and the discovery that the C 5a receptor is expressed on non-myeloid cells, suggesting that C5A confers previously unexpected functions on certain target tissue cells, including bronchial and alveolar epithelial cells, hepatocytes, astrocytes, and vascular endothelial cells.

TL;DR: Findings suggest that immune-mediated clearance of virus may occur in a few fortunate individuals.

TL;DR: Emerging information on the role of costimulatory molecules in T-cell activation offers several new strategies for enhancing antitumor responses, including the induction of expression of costIMulatory molecules on tumor cells, enhancement of the presentation of transferred tumor antigen by host antigen-presenting cells, and ex vivo antigen priming of autologous antigen- presenting cells.

TL;DR: Progress has been made in inducing this response by vaccination and identification of the phenotype of some protective cells, the antigens to which these cells respond and the cytokines produced in response to infection which modulate disease.

TL;DR: It is concluded that the expansion of neither population alone inevitably results in graft damage or tolerance in organ transplants.

TL;DR: Evidence now shows that nitric oxide can both enhance and suppress T- cell functions and that some subsets of T-cell clones can be activated to produce nitrous oxide.

TL;DR: It is clear from current data that the Th2 cytokines play a primary role in granuloma formation, whereas the Th1-associated lymphokine interferon-gamma acts as an endogenous downregulator of the response.

TL;DR: The data suggest that B7-1/B7-2 signaling not only controls cell proliferation and T-helper cell subset selection, but also T-cell survival, as well as CTLA4-mediated signal transduction.

TL;DR: Studies of the regulation of macrophage differentiation and activation by cytokines have yielded insights into the heterogeneity of their functions in natural and acquired immunity, including immunity to infections by mycobacteria and HIV.

TL;DR: Metal-induced presentation of cryptic self-peptides emerges as a possible mechanism for activation of 'metal-specific' T cells, challenging the hypothesis of a random polyclonal activation of T and B cells by metals.

TL;DR: A considerable number of cDNAs coding for allergens have been isolated and expressed and structural and immunological similarities between recombinant allergens and natural allergens indicate that a sufficient panel of recombinant allergic diseases can be produced for diagnosis and therapy of allergic diseases.

TL;DR: In the mouse, the gut mucosa is a major site of extrathymic differentiation of T cells, and these later cells appear to have a very restricted, probably autoreactive repertoire, and also display natural killer cell features.

TL;DR: The recent finding that distinct primary human immunodeficiencies result from mutations in genes encoding two non-transmembrane protein tyrosine kinases underscores the importance of this class of enzyme in antigen receptor signal transduction.

TL;DR: Major progress has been made in determining the structure and function of the early pre-T cell receptor, in defining cell types that mediate positive selection, and in analyzing the contribution of MHC and co-receptors to CD4/CD8 lineage commitment.

TL;DR: Recent work has begun to elucidate the mechanisms that control lytic-protein secretion, and reveals that some unusual features of these secretory processes might explain some of the important features of killing by cytotoxic T lymphocytes.

TL;DR: Evidence from tissue culture experiments and in vivo studies indicates that certain forms of antigen presentation render T cells unresponsive to subsequent antigenic stimulation, called clonal anergy.