Chronic renal failure (CRF) is accompanied by adaptive changes in electrolyte reabsorption in the thick ascending limb of Henle of surviving nephrons. To study the cellular mechanism of this adaptation, we measured intracellular cAMP in micro-dissected medullary thick ascending limb (mTAL) segments in rats with CRF. mTAL exhibited in CRF an increase of basal cAMP from 25.6 +/- 10.0 in controls to 65.8 +/- 11.3 fmol mm-1 tubule in CRF (P < 0.05). Vasopressin and calcitonin stimulated mTAL adenylate-cyclase in a dose-dependent manner in controls but failed to stimulate in CRF. Likewise, maximal stimulation with 10(-3) M 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine (IBMX) plus 10(-5) M forskolin increased cAMP in controls to 63.0 +/- 16.0 but not in CRF, where maximal stimulated values remained at 63.1 +/- 18.8 fmol mm-1 tubule (P NS). Alpha2-adrenoreceptor activation with clonidine at concentrations ranging from 10(-8) to 10(-6) M diminished cAMP production by 37% in CRF (P < 0.05), whereas no differences were found in controls. Thus, the basal intracellular cAMP is increased in rat mTAL in CRF. The finding that neither forskolin nor vasopressin were able to further augment intracellular cAMP would suggest that stimulatory pathways of the adenylate-cyclase system are activated in the basal state. However, mTAL cells in CRF seem to retain the response of normal epithelium to inhibitory pathways such as the one mediated by alpha2-adrenoreceptors.
Since the discovery of SARS-CoV-2, several antigens have been proposed to be part of COVID-19 vaccines. The receptor binding domain (RBD) of Spike protein is one of the promising candidates to develop effective vaccines since it can induce potent neutralizing antibodies. We previously reported the production of RBD in Pichia pastoris and showed it is structurally identical to the protein produced in mammalian HEK-293T cells. In this work we designed an RBD multimer construct with the purpose of increasing RBD immunogenicity. We produced multimeric particles by a transpeptidation reaction between the RBD expressed in P. pastoris and Lumazine Synthase from Brucella abortus (BLS), which is a highly immunogenic and very stable decameric protein of 170 kDa. We vaccinated mice with two doses 30 days apart, and then we measured humoral immune response. When the number of RBD copies coupled to BLS was high (6-7 RBD molecules per BLS decamer, in average), the immune response was significantly better than that elicited by RBD alone or even by RBD-BLS comprising low number of RBD copies (1-2 RBD molecules per BLS decamer). Remarkably, the construct with high number of RBD copies induced high IgG titers with high neutralizing capacity. Furthermore, a superior immune response was observed when Al(OH)3 adjuvant was added to this formulation, exhibiting a higher titer of neutralizing antibodies. Altogether our results suggest that RBD covalent coupled to BLS forming a multimer-particle shows an advantageous architecture to the antigen-presentation to the immune system which enhances immune responses. This new antigen should be considered a potent candidate for a protein-based vaccine.
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