Vaccination is the most powerful way to prevent human beings from contracting infectious diseases including viruses. In the case of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, an unexpectedly novel disease entity, HPV vaccination associated neuro-immunopathetic syndrome (HANS), has been reported and remains to be carefully verified. To elucidate the mechanism of HANS, we applied a strategy similar to the active experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE) model - one of the most popular animal models used to induce maximum immunological change in the central nervous system. Surprisingly, mice vaccinated with pertussis toxin showed neurological phenotypes that include low responsiveness of the tail reflex and locomotive mobility. Pathological analyses revealed the damage to the hypothalamus and circumventricular regions around the third ventricle, and these regions contained apoptotic vascular endothelial cells. These data suggested that HPV-vaccinated donners that are susceptible to the HPV vaccine might develop HANS under certain environmental factors. These results will give us the new insight into the murine pathological model of HANS and help us to find a way to treat of patients suffering from HANS.
Safracins A and B, new antibiotics produced by Pseudomonas fluorescens A2-2 , were tested for antitumor activity against mouse tumors . Structurally, these antibiotics belong to the saframycin family of antibiotics, and safracin B is 21-hydroxysafracin A . They showed antitumor activity against L1210 and P388 leukemias and B16 melanoma . The toxic and effective doses of safracin B were much lower than those of safracin A . Safracin B also prolonged the life span of tumor-bearing mice to a greater extent than safracin A . These results indicate that the a-carbinolamine structure plays an important role in the antitumor action of this type of antibiotic. Both safracins were, however, ineffective when their administration route differed from that used for inoculating tumor cells.
We have isolated the genomic DNA controlling the expression of murine specific melanoma antigen by employing cosmid shuttle vector and monoclonal antibody. Transfection of the cosmid library derived from mouse melanoma cells into human melanomas and repeated cell sortings of the fluorescence‐bright population enabled us to enrich the antigen‐positive transfectants. We rescued a 34.8 kb DNA fragment from the transfectants by in vitro packaging and showed it to be responsible for the antigen expression. However, we noticed instability of the antigen expression when the selection pressure imposed by the cell sorting was removed. This seemed to be due to the fact that the insert DNA was preferentially deleted from this cosmid vector without loss of the vector sequence itself.
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