No abstract

Vanadium is an important environmental and industrial pollutant whose concentrations have increased in the last decades. Due to its status as reproductive toxicant and a microtubule damaging agent, the present study investigated by immunohistochemistry the effect of the inhalation of vanadium pentoxide on gamma-tubulin within somatic and testicular germ cells. Male mice inhaled vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) (0.02 M) 1 h/twice a week for 12 weeks. Our results demonstrated that vanadium accumulates in the testes starting with the initial inhalation (24 h), and this pattern remained until the last week of treatment. In general, vanadium was capable of significantly decreasing the percentage of gamma-tubulin in all analyzed testicular cells (Sertoli, Leydig and germ cells) starting with the first week of treatment. For all cell types studied, regression analysis revealed a negative and significant relationship between the percentage of immunopositive cells to gamma-tubulin and exposure time, showing a time dependent response in all cases. Our findings suggest that alterations on this protein might imply changes in microtubule-involved function such as cell division, which in the testes might lead to damage in the spermatogenesis, leading probably to infertility.

The aim of dendritic cell (DC) vaccination in cancer is to induce tumor-specific effector T cells that may reduce and control tumor mass. Immunostimulants that could drive a desired immune response are necessary to be found in order to generate a long lasting tumor immune response. GK-1 peptide, derived from Taenia crassiceps, induces not only increase in TNFα, IFNγ, and MCP-1 production in cocultures of DCs and T lymphocytes but also immunological protection against influenza virus. Moreover, the aim of this investigation is the use of GK-1 as a bone marrow DCs (BMDCs) immunostimulant targeted with MAGE antigen; thus, BMDC may be used as immunotherapy against murine melanoma. GK-1 induced in BMDCs a meaningful increment of CD86 and IL-12. In addition, the use of BMDCs TNFα/GK-1/MAGE-AX induced the highest survival and the smallest tumors in mice. Besides, the treatment helped to increase CD8 lymphocytes levels and to produce IFNγ in lymph nodes. Moreover, the histopathological analysis showed that BMDCs treated with GK-1/TNFα and loaded with MAGE-AX induced the apparition of more apoptotic and necrotic areas in tumors than in mice without treatment. These results highlight the properties of GK-1 as an immunostimulant of DCs and suggest as a potential candidate the use of this immunotherapy against cancer disease.

No abstract

In human and porcine cysticercosis caused by the tapeworm Taenia solium, the larval stage (cysts) can infest several tissues including the central nervous system (CNS) and the skeletal muscles (SM). The cyst’s proteomics changes associated with the tissue localization in the host tissues have been poorly studied. Quantitative multiplexed proteomics has the power to evaluate global proteome changes in response to different conditions. Here, using a TMT-multiplexed strategy we identified and quantified over 4,200 proteins in cysts obtained from the SM and CNS of pigs, of which 891 were host proteins. To our knowledge, this is the most extensive intermixing of host and parasite proteins reported for tapeworm infections.Several antigens in cysticercosis, i.e., GP50, paramyosin and a calcium-binding protein were enriched in skeletal muscle cysts. Our results suggested the occurrence of tissue-enriched antigen that could be useful in the improvement of the immunodiagnosis for cysticercosis. Using several algorithms for epitope detection, we selected 42 highly antigenic proteins enriched for each tissue localization of the cysts. Taking into account the fold changes and the antigen/epitope contents, we selected 10 proteins and produced synthetic peptides from the best epitopes. Nine peptides were recognized by serum antibodies of cysticercotic pigs, suggesting that those peptides are antigens. Mixtures of peptides derived from SM and CNS cysts yielded better results than mixtures of peptides derived from a single tissue location, however the identification of the ‘optimal’ tissue-enriched antigens remains to be discovered. Through machine learning technologies, we determined that a reliable immunodiagnostic test for porcine cysticercosis required at least five different antigenic determinants.