A new carbon nanotube porous silica poroshell stationary phase was developed. The chromatographic support was coated with ultrashort single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in a noncovalent way. It was demonstrated that the porous amino silica surface of the 300 NH2 poroshell column stabilized with 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone efficiently and stably adsorbed SWCNTs onto the chromatographic support. It was shown that this novel poroshell carbon nanotube (CNT) stationary phase was very useful for the HPLC separation of a series of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in a short analysis time (<3 min). The high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was validated and was successfully tested for the fast quantitative and qualitative control of chemotherapeutic bags fabricated in a hospital pharmacy.
Telomerase is a prototype-shared tumor Ag and represents an attractive target for anticancer immunotherapy. We have previously described promiscuous and immunogenic HLA-DR–restricted peptides derived from human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and referred as universal cancer peptide (UCP). In nonsmall cell lung cancer, the presence of spontaneous UCP-specific CD4 T cell responses increases the survival of chemotherapy-responding patients. However, the precise mechanisms of hTERT’s uptake, processing, and presentation on MHC-II molecules to stimulate CD4 T cells are poorly understood. In this work, by using well-characterized UCP-specific CD4 T cell clones, we showed that hTERT processing and presentation on MHC-II involve both classical endolysosomal and nonclassical cytosolic pathways. Furthermore, to our knowledge, we demonstrated for the first time that hTERT’s internalization by dendritic cells requires its interaction with surface heparan sulfate proteoglycans. Altogether, our findings provide a novel mechanism of tumor-specific CD4 T cell activation and will be useful for the development of novel cancer immunotherapies that harness CD4 T cells.
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