No abstract

Most individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) generate a CD4+ T-cell response that is dominated by a few epitopes. Immunodominance may be counterproductive because a broad CD4+ T-cell response is associated with reduced viral load. Previous studies indicated that antigen three-dimensional structure controls antigen processing and presentation and therefore CD4+ T-cell epitope dominance. Dominant epitopes occur adjacent to the V1-V2, V3, and V4 loops because proteolytic antigen processing in the loops promotes presentation of adjacent sequences. In this study, three gp120 (strain JR-FL) variants were constructed, in which deletions of single outer-domain disulfide bonds were expected to introduce local conformational flexibility and promote presentation of additional CD4+ T-cell epitopes. Following mucosal immunization of C57BL/6 mice with wild-type or variant gp120 lacking the V3-flanking disulfide bond, the typical pattern of dominant epitopes was observed, suggesting that the disulfide bond posed no barrier to antigen presentation. In mice that lacked gamma interferoninducible lysosomal thioreductase (GILT), proliferative responses to the typically dominant epitopes of gp120 were selectively depressed, and the dominance pattern was rearranged. Deletion of the V3-flanking disulfide bond or one of the V4-flanking disulfide bonds partially restored highly proliferative responses to the typically dominant epitopes. These results reveal an acute dependence of dominant CD4+ T-cell responses on the native gp120 conformation.

The recent years have witnessed a considerable rise in the number of vehicles, which has placed transportation infrastructure and traffic control under tremendous pressure. Yielding timely and accurate traffic flow information is essential in the development of traffic control strategies. Despite the continual advances and the wealth of literature available in intelligent transportation system (ITS), there is a lack of practical traffic counting system, which is readily deployable on edge devices. In this study, we introduce a low-cost and effective edge-based system integrating object detection models to perform vehicle detecting, tracking, and counting. First, a vehicle detection dataset (VDD) representing traffic conditions in Vietnam was created. Several deep learning models for VDD were then examined on two different edge device types. Using this detection, we presented a lightweight counting method seamlessly combining with a traditional tracking method to increase counting accuracy. Finally, the traffic flow information is obtained based on counted vehicle categories and their directions. The experiment results clearly indicate that the proposed system achieves the top inference speed at around 26.8 frames per second (FPS) with 92.1% accuracy on the VDD. This proves that our proposal is capable of producing high-accuracy traffic flow information and can be applicable to ITS in order to reduce labor-intensive tasks in traffic management.

3960 Multiple myeloma (MM) is a B cell neoplasm characterized by clonal expansion of malignant plasma cells in the bone marrow. Despite the use of new drugs such as lenalidomide and bortezomib, MM remains an incurable disease. Successful treatment of MM with allogeneic stem cell transplantation suggests that MM is susceptible to immunologic approaches. NK cells are the primary effectors of the innate immune response against infectious pathogens and malignant transformation. Unlike T and B cells, NK cells do not recognize antigens in the context of classical major histocompatibility complex (MHC) but lyse target cells without specific antigen recognition. Nevertheless, MM cells have developed mechanisms to evade innate immune surveillance and the molecular basis for target resistance to NK cell-mediated lysis is not well understood. To identify novel pathways that modulate MM cell resistance to the immune system, we previously developed a genetic screen to detect cell-cell interactions using a large lentiviral shRNA library containing a total of 6,144 shRNAs targeting more than 1,000 human genes. Using this approach we found that silencing JAK1 and JAK2 results in significantly increased MM cell susceptibility to NK cell lysis. This effect was not noted when JAK3 and TYK2 were targeted. JAK1, JAK2 JAK3 and TYK2 are members of a family of tyrosine kinases that are constitutively associated with many membrane cytokine receptors. After activation, JAK proteins regulate phosphorylation/activation of STAT proteins, which subsequently initiate gene transcription. To understand JAK1 and JAK2 involvement in MM resistance to NK cells, we undertook a series of experiments to analyze the JAK signaling pathway in MM cells. We first analyzed the activation status of STAT proteins in a series of MM cell lines (IM-9, KM12BM, RPMI 8226, U266) in which JAK1 and JAK2 expression was reduced by specific shRNAs. Constitutive activation of STAT proteins was not affected by JAK1 or JAK2 gene silencing suggesting that these kinases were not activated in the absence of cytokine receptor-mediated signaling. Since JAK1 and JAK2 are associated with the IFN-γ receptor and we previously showed that JAK1 and JAK2 silencing induces increased secretion of IFN-γ from NK cells, we pre incubated MM cell lines with NK activated supernatant or recombinant IFN-γ and tested them for STAT activation. 15 min incubation was sufficient to initiate phosphorylation of STAT1 but no other STATs were activated. Silencing of JAK1 or JAK2 with specific shRNAs prevented STAT1 activation. To validate this finding, we tested primary MM cells treated with different concentrations of Jak inhibitor 1 (0 nM, 10 nM, 30 nM and 40 nM). These cells had a similar STAT profile at their basal level when compared with the previously tested MM cell lines. Pre-incubation with NK activated supernatant or IFN-γ also induced rapid activation of STAT1, which was completely inhibited when cells were pre-treated with Jak inhibitor 1. Treatment of MM cells with 10, 30 and 40 nM of Jak inhibitor enhanced killing by NK cells by 46.6%, 51% and 53%, compared to untreated cells (p=0.0036, p=0.0011 and p=0.0010 respectively). These findings demonstrate that IFN-γ signals rapidly enhance resistance of MM cells to NK cells but inhibition of this pathway at the level of JAK1 and JAK2 reverses this effect and induces susceptibility to NK cell mediated lysis. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.