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Papers by Gaetano Donofrio

Background.Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis is a progressive disease with short life expectancy and ... more Background.Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis is a progressive disease with short life expectancy and no disease-modifying pharmacological therapy. The continuous refinement of animal models and the integration of in-vivo imaging techniques is fundamental for the selection of new antifibrotic drugs.Indocyanine Green (ICG), a fluorescent dye, was administered by oropharyngeal aspiration (OA) to mice with Bleomycin (BLM) to map the lung exposure.Methods.Female mice C57bl/6 were treated via OA with BLM+ICG or ICG. Animals were imaged at 7, 14 and 21 days either with the fluorescent system or Micro-CT. At each time point subsets of mice were sampled for ex-vivo assessment. Histological assessment of fibrosis by Ashcroft score, airspace enlargements and mean linear intercept (MLI) were evaluated at 7, 14 and 21 days. Leukocytes and cytokines were measured in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Results.Fluorescence imaging revealed a persistent lung signal in both groups until 21 days. In BLM+ICG gr...

Journal of Translational Medicine, 2015

Background: Chronic inflammation of the airways is a central component in lung diseases and is fr... more Background: Chronic inflammation of the airways is a central component in lung diseases and is frequently associated with bacterial infections. Monitoring the pro-inflammatory capability of bacterial virulence factors in vivo is challenging and usually requires invasive methods. Methods: Lung inflammation was induced using the culture supernatants from two Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical strains, VR1 and VR2, isolated from patients affected by cystic fibrosis and showing different phenotypes in terms of motility, colony characteristics and biofilm production as well as pyoverdine and pyocyanine release. More interesting, the strains differ also for the presence in supernatants of metalloproteases, a family of virulence factors with known pro-inflammatory activity. We have evaluated the benefit of using a mouse model, transiently expressing the luciferase reporter gene under the control of an heterologous IL-8 bovine promoter, to detect and monitoring lung inflammation. Results: In vivo imaging indicated that VR1 strain, releasing in its culture supernatant metalloproteases and other virulence factors, induced lung inflammation while the VR2 strain presented with a severely reduced pro-inflammatory activity. The bioluminescence signal was detectable from 4 to 48 h after supernatant instillation. The animal model was also used to test the anti-inflammatory activity of azithromycin (AZM), an antibiotic with demonstrated inhibitory effect on the synthesis of bacterial exoproducts. The inflammation signal in mice was in fact significantly reduced when bacteria grew in the presence of a sub-lethal dose of AZM causing inhibition of the synthesis of metalloproteases and other bacterial elements. The in vivo data were further supported by quantification of immune cells and cytokine expression in mouse broncho-alveolar lavage samples. Conclusions: This experimental animal model is based on the transient transduction of the bovine IL-8 promoter, a gene representing a major player during inflammation, essential for leukocytes recruitment to the inflamed tissue. It appears to be an appropriate molecular read-out for monitoring the activation of inflammatory pathways caused by bacterial virulence factors. The data presented indicate that the model is suitable to functionally monitor in real time the lung inflammatory response facilitating the identification of bacterial factors with pro-inflammatory activity and the evaluation of the anti-inflammatory activity of old and new molecules for therapeutic use.

Journal of dairy science, 2010

A monoclonal antibody (antik-B) against an oligopeptide of 23 AA corresponding to the region 131-... more A monoclonal antibody (antik-B) against an oligopeptide of 23 AA corresponding to the region 131-153 of bovine kappa-casein (kappa-CN) B was generated using the Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCAL) technology. Both AA substitutions distinguishing kappa-CN A and B are located in that region (positions 136 and 148). In this study, the reactivity of antik-B to milk samples collected from cows previously genotyped as CSN3*AA, CSN3*AB, and CSN3*BB was tested. According to Western blot results, antik-B recognized kappa-CN B and it showed no cross-reactivity toward kappa-CN A and other milk proteins. Furthermore, a modified Western blot method, urea-PAGE Western blot, was set up to assess the reactivity of antik-B toward all isoforms of kappa-CN B. In conclusion, antik-B was specific to kappa-CN B in milk and it seemed to be reactive toward all its isoforms.

Cancers

Multiple myeloma (MM) cells consume huge amounts of glutamine and, as a consequence, the amino ac... more Multiple myeloma (MM) cells consume huge amounts of glutamine and, as a consequence, the amino acid concentration is lower-than-normal in the bone marrow (BM) of MM patients. Here we show that MM-dependent glutamine depletion induces glutamine synthetase in stromal cells, as demonstrated in BM biopsies of MM patients, and reproduced in vitro by co-culturing human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) with MM cells. Moreover, glutamine depletion hinders osteoblast differentiation of MSCs, which is also severely blunted by the spent, low-glutamine medium of MM cells, and rescued by glutamine restitution. Glutaminase and the concentrative glutamine transporter SNAT2 are induced during osteoblastogenesis in vivo and in vitro, and both needed for MSCs differentiation, pointing to enhanced the requirement for the amino acid. Osteoblastogenesis also triggers the induction of glutamine-dependent asparagine synthetase (ASNS), and, among non-essential amino acids, asparagine rescues differentiatio...

Vaccines

Lack of understanding of the immune response to mycobacterial pathogens has impeded progress in d... more Lack of understanding of the immune response to mycobacterial pathogens has impeded progress in development of vaccines. Infection leads to development of an immune response that controls infection but is unable to eliminate the pathogen, resulting in a persistent infection. Although this puzzle remains to be solved, progress has been made using cattle as a model species to study the immune response to a prototypic mycobacterium, Mycobacterium a. paratuberculosis (Map). As chronicled in the review, incremental advances in characterizing the immune response to mycobacteria during the last 30 years with increases in information on the evolution of mycobacteria and relA, a gene regulating the stringent response, have brought us closer to an answer. We provide a brief overview of how mycobacterial pathogens were introduced into cattle during the transition of humankind to nomadic pastoralists who domesticated animals for food and farming. We summarize what is known about speciation of m...

Frontiers in Immunology

The Morbillivirus peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) is the causal agent of a highly contagi... more The Morbillivirus peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) is the causal agent of a highly contagious disease that mostly affects sheep and goats and produces considerable losses in developing countries. Current PPRV control strategies rely on live-attenuated vaccines, which are not ideal, as they cannot differentiate infected from vaccinated animals (DIVA). Recombinant vector-based vaccines expressing viral subunits can provide an alternative to conventional vaccines, as they can be easily paired with DIVA diagnostic tools. In the present work, we used the bovine herpesvirus-4-based vector (BoHV-4-A) to deliver PPRV hemagglutinin H antigen (BoHV-4-A-PPRV-H-ΔTK). Vaccination with BoHV-4-A-PPRV-H-ΔTK protected sheep from virulent PPRV challenge and prevented virus shedding. Protection correlated with anti-PPRV IgGs, neutralizing antibodies and IFN-γ-producing cells induced by the vaccine. Detection of antibodies exclusively against H-PPRV in animal sera and not against other PPRV vira...

Vaccines

COVID-19 is an ongoing pandemic caused by the highly infectious coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that is en... more COVID-19 is an ongoing pandemic caused by the highly infectious coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that is engaging worldwide scientific research to find a timely and effective eradication strategy. Great efforts have been put into anti-COVID-19 vaccine generation in an effort to protect the world population and block SARS-CoV-2 spread. To validate the protective efficacy of the vaccination campaign and effectively control the pandemic, it is necessary to quantify the induction of neutralizing antibodies by vaccination, as they have been established to be a correlate of protection. In this work, a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus neutralization assay, based on a replication-incompetent lentivirus expressing an adapted form of CoV-2 S protein and an ACE2/TMPRSS2 stably expressing cell line, has been minimized in terms of protocol steps without loss of accuracy. The goal of the present simplified neutralization system is to improve SARS-CoV-2 vaccination campaign by means of an easy and accessible approach...

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a hematologic malignancy characterized by the accumulation of bone marro... more Multiple myeloma (MM) is a hematologic malignancy characterized by the accumulation of bone marrow (BM) clonal plasma cells, which are strictly dependent on the microenvironment. Despite the improvement of MM survival with the use of new drugs, MM patients still relapse and become always refractory to the treatment. The development of new therapeutic strategies targeting both tumor and microenvironment cells are necessary. Oncolytic virotherapy represent a promising approach in cancer treatment due to tumor-specific oncolysis and activation of the immune system. Different types of human viruses were checked in preclinical MM models, and the use of several viruses are currently investigated in clinical trials in MM patients. More recently, the use of alternative non-human viruses has been also highlighted in preclinical studies. This strategy could avoid the antiviral immune response of the patients against human viruses due to vaccination or natural infections, which could invalid t...

Vaccines

An efficacious vaccine for sheep-associated malignant catarrhal fever (SA-MCF) is important for t... more An efficacious vaccine for sheep-associated malignant catarrhal fever (SA-MCF) is important for the livestock industry. Research towards SA-MCF vaccine development is hindered by the absence of culture systems to propagate the causative agent, ovine herpesvirus-2 (OvHV-2), which means its genome cannot be experimentally modified to generate an attenuated vaccine strain. Alternative approaches for vaccine development are needed to deliver OvHV-2 antigens. Bovine herpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4) has been evaluated as a vaccine vector for several viral antigens with promising results. In this study, we genetically engineered BoHV-4 to express OvHV-2 glycoprotein B (gB) and evaluated its efficacy as an SA-MCF vaccine using a rabbit model. The construction of a viable recombinant virus (BoHV-4-AΔTK-OvHV-2-gB) and confirmation of OvHV-2 gB expression were performed in vitro. The immunization of rabbits with BoHV-4-AΔTK-OvHV-2-gB elicited strong humoral responses to OvHV-2 gB, including neutralizing...

Frontiers in Immunology

Bovine herpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4) is a promising vector for the delivery and intracellular expression... more Bovine herpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4) is a promising vector for the delivery and intracellular expression of recombinant antigens and can thus be considered as a new prototype vaccine formulation system. An interesting, and actively pursued, antigen in the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection prophylaxis (and therapy) is the CC chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) co-receptor, whose blockage by specific antibodies has been shown to inhibit both viral entry and cell-to-cell transmission of the virus. Building on our previous work on the BoHV-4 vector system, we have engineered and tested a replication-competent derivative of BoHV-4 (BoHV-4-CMV-hCCR5ΔTK) bearing a human CCR5 (hCCR5) expression cassette. We show here that CCR5 is indeed expressed at high levels in multiple types of BoHV-4-CMV-hCCR5ΔTK-infected cells. More importantly, two intravenous inoculations of CCR5-expressing BoHV-4 virions into rabbits led to the production of anti-CCR5 antibodies capable of reacting with the CCR5 receptor exposed on the surface of HEK293T cells through specific recognition of the amino-terminal region (aa 14-34) of the protein. Given the growing interest for anti-CCR5 immunization as an HIV control strategy and the many advantages of virus-based immunogen formulations (especially for poorly immunogenic or self-antigens), the results reported in this study provide preliminary validation of BoHV-4 as a safe viral vector suitable for CCR5 vaccination.

Frontiers in Veterinary Science

Journal of Hematology & Oncology

Background The oncolytic viruses have shown promising results for the treatment of multiple myelo... more Background The oncolytic viruses have shown promising results for the treatment of multiple myeloma. However, the use of human viruses is limited by the patients’ antiviral immune response. In this study, we investigated an alternative oncolytic strategy using non-human pathogen viruses as the bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) that were able to interact with CD46. Methods We treated several human myeloma cell lines and non-myeloma cell lines with BVDV to evaluate the expression of CD46 and to study the effect on cell viability by flow cytometry. The possible synergistic effect of bortezomib in combination with BVDV was also tested. Moreover, we infected the bone marrow mononuclear cells obtained from myeloma patients and we checked the BVDV effect on different cell populations, defined by CD138, CD14, CD3, CD19, and CD56 expression evaluated by flow cytometry. Finally, the in vivo BVDV effect was tested in NOD-SCID mice injected subcutaneously with myeloma cell lines. Results Human...

Frontiers in Immunology

East Coast Fever (ECF), caused by the tick-borne apicomplexan parasite Theileria parva, is a lead... more East Coast Fever (ECF), caused by the tick-borne apicomplexan parasite Theileria parva, is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in cattle of sub-Saharan Africa. The infection and treatment method (ITM) is currently the only vaccine available to control T. parva. Although ITM elicits levels of protection, its widespread adoption is limited by costs, laborious production process, and antibiotic co-treatment requirement, necessitating the development of a more sustainable vaccine. To this end, efforts have been concentrated in the identification of new T. parva vaccine antigens and in the development of suitable platforms for antigen expression. In this study, we investigated the molecular and antigenic properties of T. parva antigen Tp9 expressed by mammalian cells. Data indicate that Tp9 contains a signal peptide that is weakly functional in mammalian cells. Thus, Tp9 secretion from mammalian cells increased 10-fold after the native signal peptide was replaced with the human tissue plasminogen activator signal peptide (tPA). Sera from all T. parva-immune cattle recognized this recombinant, secreted Tp9. Additionally, PBMC from ITM-immunized cattle produced significant (p < 0.05) amounts of IFNγ following ex vivo exposure to Tp9, but this response varied between cattle of different MHC class I and class II genotypes. In addition, depletion experiments demonstrated that IFNγ to Tp9 was primarily produced by CD4 + T cells. Molecular analysis demonstrated that Tp9 presents a signal peptide that is weakly functional in mammalian cells, suggesting that it remains within lymphocytes during infection. Tp9 secretion from mammalian cells was substantially increased when the tPA secretion signal sequence was substituted for the native secretion signal sequence. Using full-length, recombinant Tp9 secreted from mammalian cells, we demonstrated that T. parva-immune cattle develop both humoral and cellular immune responses to this antigen. Collectively, these results provide rationale for further evaluation of Tp9 as a component of a T. parva subunit vaccine.

Molecular Nutrition & Food Research

Vaccines

Nipah virus (NiV) is an emergent pathogen capable of causing acute respiratory illness and fatal ... more Nipah virus (NiV) is an emergent pathogen capable of causing acute respiratory illness and fatal encephalitis in pigs and humans. A high fatality rate and broad host tropism makes NiV a serious public and animal health concern. There is therefore an urgent need for a NiV vaccines to protect animals and humans. In this study we investigated the immunogenicity of bovine herpesvirus (BoHV-4) vectors expressing either NiV attachment (G) or fusion (F) glycoproteins, BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-GΔTK or BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-FΔTK, respectively in pigs. The vaccines were benchmarked against a canarypox (ALVAC) vector expressing NiV G, previously demonstrated to induce protective immunity in pigs. Both BoHV-4 vectors induced robust antigen-specific antibody responses. BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-GΔTK stimulated NiV-neutralizing antibody titers comparable to ALVAC NiV G and greater than those induced by BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-FΔTK. In contrast, only BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-FΔTK immunized pigs had antibodies capable of significantly...

Blood

422 Multiple myeloma (MM) is characterized by the accumulation of malignant plasmacells into the ... more 422 Multiple myeloma (MM) is characterized by the accumulation of malignant plasmacells into the bone marrow (BM) microenvironment that supports their growth and survival. Particularly, an increase of BM angiogenesis occurs in relationship with plasmacells infiltration playing a critical role in the progression on monoclonal gammopathy. Hypoxia is known to be associated to angiogenesis in solid tumors as well as the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α is a critical trigger and regulator of the angiogenic switch. Actually, the oxygen levels in the BM of patients with monoclonal gammopathy as well the effects of hypoxia and HIF-1α on the gene expression and pro-angiogenic profile of CD138+ cells are not known. In this study, first, we investigated the level of BM oxygen saturation (sO2) and partial pressure (pO2) in a cohort of 44 patients with monoclonal gammopathy at the diagnosis including active MM (n°=25), smoldering MM (n° = 8) and MGUS (n°=11) showing that BM of MM patients was h...

Blood

3927 Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α is a critical trigger and regulator of tumor associated an... more 3927 Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α is a critical trigger and regulator of tumor associated angiogenesis. It has been previously reported that bone marrow (BM) microenvironment is hypoxic in multiple myeloma (MM) patients and that HIF-1α is overexpressed by CD138+ MM cells and modulates the transcriptional and pro-angiogenic profiles of MM cells. The potential role of HIF-1α as a therapeutic target in MM is under investigation. To deepen this issue, in this study we explored the effect of a stable HIF-1α inhibition in MM cells on cell proliferation, survival and on MM-induced angiogenesis either in vitro or in vivo using a plasmocytoma model. Human myeloma cell lines (HMCL)s were screened for HIF-1α protein expression in normoxia condition finding that 2 out 5 HMCLs were positive (JJN3 and RPMI-8226). Anti-HIF-1α Lentivirus sh RNA pool was used for HIF-1α stable knock-out in human myeloma cell lines (HMCL)s whereas the pKLO.1 lentiviral vector was used as the empty control vector...

Blood

The immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs®) exert an anti-myeloma effect by cereblon-dependent destructio... more The immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs®) exert an anti-myeloma effect by cereblon-dependent destruction of IKZF proteinseither through a direct action on multiple myeloma (MM) cells or through indirect immunomodulatory and anti-angiogenic effects.Previous data indicated that MM cells overexpress hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-1α and that HIF-1α suppression significantly blocks MM-induced angiogenesis and reduces in vivo tumoral burden in MM mouse models. Interestingly, it has been recently reported that HIF-1α knock-down in MM cells potentiates the in vitro effect of Lenalidomide (LEN) on cell proliferation without changing cell viability and that LEN is not able to suppress HIF-1α expression in MM cells. These evidences give the rationale design to investigate the in vivo effect of HIF-1α stable suppression in MM cells on LEN sensitivity. Thus, in this study, we assessed the effect of LEN in vivo in combination with HIF-1α inhibition in a non-obese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficie...

Blood

2947 It has been previously reported that bone marrow (BM) microenvironment is hypoxic in multipl... more 2947 It has been previously reported that bone marrow (BM) microenvironment is hypoxic in multiple myeloma (MM) patients and that hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-1α is overexpressed by MM cells. However, the potential role of HIF-1α as a therapeutic target in MM is not known and is currently under investigation. In this study we explored the effect of persistent HIF-1α inhibition by expression of a lentivirus shRNA pool in MM cells on proliferation, survival and transcriptional and pro-angiogenic profiles of MM cells either in vitro or in vivo in mouse models. A HIF-1α Lentivirus shRNA pool was used for HIF-1α stable knock-down in human myeloma cell lines (HMCL)s and the pKLO.1 lentiviral vector was used as the empty control vector. HMCLs were infected and then selected with puromycin. Selected clones were screened for HIF-1α, HIF-1β, HIF-2α and HIF-3α. The transcriptional profiles were evaluated in the HMCL JJN3 cells transduced with shRNA forHIF-1α (JJN3-anti-HIF-1α) and on those i...

Background.Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis is a progressive disease with short life expectancy and ... more Background.Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis is a progressive disease with short life expectancy and no disease-modifying pharmacological therapy. The continuous refinement of animal models and the integration of in-vivo imaging techniques is fundamental for the selection of new antifibrotic drugs.Indocyanine Green (ICG), a fluorescent dye, was administered by oropharyngeal aspiration (OA) to mice with Bleomycin (BLM) to map the lung exposure.Methods.Female mice C57bl/6 were treated via OA with BLM+ICG or ICG. Animals were imaged at 7, 14 and 21 days either with the fluorescent system or Micro-CT. At each time point subsets of mice were sampled for ex-vivo assessment. Histological assessment of fibrosis by Ashcroft score, airspace enlargements and mean linear intercept (MLI) were evaluated at 7, 14 and 21 days. Leukocytes and cytokines were measured in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. Results.Fluorescence imaging revealed a persistent lung signal in both groups until 21 days. In BLM+ICG gr...

Journal of Translational Medicine, 2015

Background: Chronic inflammation of the airways is a central component in lung diseases and is fr... more Background: Chronic inflammation of the airways is a central component in lung diseases and is frequently associated with bacterial infections. Monitoring the pro-inflammatory capability of bacterial virulence factors in vivo is challenging and usually requires invasive methods. Methods: Lung inflammation was induced using the culture supernatants from two Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical strains, VR1 and VR2, isolated from patients affected by cystic fibrosis and showing different phenotypes in terms of motility, colony characteristics and biofilm production as well as pyoverdine and pyocyanine release. More interesting, the strains differ also for the presence in supernatants of metalloproteases, a family of virulence factors with known pro-inflammatory activity. We have evaluated the benefit of using a mouse model, transiently expressing the luciferase reporter gene under the control of an heterologous IL-8 bovine promoter, to detect and monitoring lung inflammation. Results: In vivo imaging indicated that VR1 strain, releasing in its culture supernatant metalloproteases and other virulence factors, induced lung inflammation while the VR2 strain presented with a severely reduced pro-inflammatory activity. The bioluminescence signal was detectable from 4 to 48 h after supernatant instillation. The animal model was also used to test the anti-inflammatory activity of azithromycin (AZM), an antibiotic with demonstrated inhibitory effect on the synthesis of bacterial exoproducts. The inflammation signal in mice was in fact significantly reduced when bacteria grew in the presence of a sub-lethal dose of AZM causing inhibition of the synthesis of metalloproteases and other bacterial elements. The in vivo data were further supported by quantification of immune cells and cytokine expression in mouse broncho-alveolar lavage samples. Conclusions: This experimental animal model is based on the transient transduction of the bovine IL-8 promoter, a gene representing a major player during inflammation, essential for leukocytes recruitment to the inflamed tissue. It appears to be an appropriate molecular read-out for monitoring the activation of inflammatory pathways caused by bacterial virulence factors. The data presented indicate that the model is suitable to functionally monitor in real time the lung inflammatory response facilitating the identification of bacterial factors with pro-inflammatory activity and the evaluation of the anti-inflammatory activity of old and new molecules for therapeutic use.

Journal of dairy science, 2010

A monoclonal antibody (antik-B) against an oligopeptide of 23 AA corresponding to the region 131-... more A monoclonal antibody (antik-B) against an oligopeptide of 23 AA corresponding to the region 131-153 of bovine kappa-casein (kappa-CN) B was generated using the Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCAL) technology. Both AA substitutions distinguishing kappa-CN A and B are located in that region (positions 136 and 148). In this study, the reactivity of antik-B to milk samples collected from cows previously genotyped as CSN3*AA, CSN3*AB, and CSN3*BB was tested. According to Western blot results, antik-B recognized kappa-CN B and it showed no cross-reactivity toward kappa-CN A and other milk proteins. Furthermore, a modified Western blot method, urea-PAGE Western blot, was set up to assess the reactivity of antik-B toward all isoforms of kappa-CN B. In conclusion, antik-B was specific to kappa-CN B in milk and it seemed to be reactive toward all its isoforms.

Cancers

Multiple myeloma (MM) cells consume huge amounts of glutamine and, as a consequence, the amino ac... more Multiple myeloma (MM) cells consume huge amounts of glutamine and, as a consequence, the amino acid concentration is lower-than-normal in the bone marrow (BM) of MM patients. Here we show that MM-dependent glutamine depletion induces glutamine synthetase in stromal cells, as demonstrated in BM biopsies of MM patients, and reproduced in vitro by co-culturing human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) with MM cells. Moreover, glutamine depletion hinders osteoblast differentiation of MSCs, which is also severely blunted by the spent, low-glutamine medium of MM cells, and rescued by glutamine restitution. Glutaminase and the concentrative glutamine transporter SNAT2 are induced during osteoblastogenesis in vivo and in vitro, and both needed for MSCs differentiation, pointing to enhanced the requirement for the amino acid. Osteoblastogenesis also triggers the induction of glutamine-dependent asparagine synthetase (ASNS), and, among non-essential amino acids, asparagine rescues differentiatio...

Vaccines

Lack of understanding of the immune response to mycobacterial pathogens has impeded progress in d... more Lack of understanding of the immune response to mycobacterial pathogens has impeded progress in development of vaccines. Infection leads to development of an immune response that controls infection but is unable to eliminate the pathogen, resulting in a persistent infection. Although this puzzle remains to be solved, progress has been made using cattle as a model species to study the immune response to a prototypic mycobacterium, Mycobacterium a. paratuberculosis (Map). As chronicled in the review, incremental advances in characterizing the immune response to mycobacteria during the last 30 years with increases in information on the evolution of mycobacteria and relA, a gene regulating the stringent response, have brought us closer to an answer. We provide a brief overview of how mycobacterial pathogens were introduced into cattle during the transition of humankind to nomadic pastoralists who domesticated animals for food and farming. We summarize what is known about speciation of m...

Frontiers in Immunology

The Morbillivirus peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) is the causal agent of a highly contagi... more The Morbillivirus peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV) is the causal agent of a highly contagious disease that mostly affects sheep and goats and produces considerable losses in developing countries. Current PPRV control strategies rely on live-attenuated vaccines, which are not ideal, as they cannot differentiate infected from vaccinated animals (DIVA). Recombinant vector-based vaccines expressing viral subunits can provide an alternative to conventional vaccines, as they can be easily paired with DIVA diagnostic tools. In the present work, we used the bovine herpesvirus-4-based vector (BoHV-4-A) to deliver PPRV hemagglutinin H antigen (BoHV-4-A-PPRV-H-ΔTK). Vaccination with BoHV-4-A-PPRV-H-ΔTK protected sheep from virulent PPRV challenge and prevented virus shedding. Protection correlated with anti-PPRV IgGs, neutralizing antibodies and IFN-γ-producing cells induced by the vaccine. Detection of antibodies exclusively against H-PPRV in animal sera and not against other PPRV vira...

Vaccines

COVID-19 is an ongoing pandemic caused by the highly infectious coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that is en... more COVID-19 is an ongoing pandemic caused by the highly infectious coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that is engaging worldwide scientific research to find a timely and effective eradication strategy. Great efforts have been put into anti-COVID-19 vaccine generation in an effort to protect the world population and block SARS-CoV-2 spread. To validate the protective efficacy of the vaccination campaign and effectively control the pandemic, it is necessary to quantify the induction of neutralizing antibodies by vaccination, as they have been established to be a correlate of protection. In this work, a SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus neutralization assay, based on a replication-incompetent lentivirus expressing an adapted form of CoV-2 S protein and an ACE2/TMPRSS2 stably expressing cell line, has been minimized in terms of protocol steps without loss of accuracy. The goal of the present simplified neutralization system is to improve SARS-CoV-2 vaccination campaign by means of an easy and accessible approach...

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a hematologic malignancy characterized by the accumulation of bone marro... more Multiple myeloma (MM) is a hematologic malignancy characterized by the accumulation of bone marrow (BM) clonal plasma cells, which are strictly dependent on the microenvironment. Despite the improvement of MM survival with the use of new drugs, MM patients still relapse and become always refractory to the treatment. The development of new therapeutic strategies targeting both tumor and microenvironment cells are necessary. Oncolytic virotherapy represent a promising approach in cancer treatment due to tumor-specific oncolysis and activation of the immune system. Different types of human viruses were checked in preclinical MM models, and the use of several viruses are currently investigated in clinical trials in MM patients. More recently, the use of alternative non-human viruses has been also highlighted in preclinical studies. This strategy could avoid the antiviral immune response of the patients against human viruses due to vaccination or natural infections, which could invalid t...

Vaccines

An efficacious vaccine for sheep-associated malignant catarrhal fever (SA-MCF) is important for t... more An efficacious vaccine for sheep-associated malignant catarrhal fever (SA-MCF) is important for the livestock industry. Research towards SA-MCF vaccine development is hindered by the absence of culture systems to propagate the causative agent, ovine herpesvirus-2 (OvHV-2), which means its genome cannot be experimentally modified to generate an attenuated vaccine strain. Alternative approaches for vaccine development are needed to deliver OvHV-2 antigens. Bovine herpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4) has been evaluated as a vaccine vector for several viral antigens with promising results. In this study, we genetically engineered BoHV-4 to express OvHV-2 glycoprotein B (gB) and evaluated its efficacy as an SA-MCF vaccine using a rabbit model. The construction of a viable recombinant virus (BoHV-4-AΔTK-OvHV-2-gB) and confirmation of OvHV-2 gB expression were performed in vitro. The immunization of rabbits with BoHV-4-AΔTK-OvHV-2-gB elicited strong humoral responses to OvHV-2 gB, including neutralizing...

Frontiers in Immunology

Bovine herpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4) is a promising vector for the delivery and intracellular expression... more Bovine herpesvirus 4 (BoHV-4) is a promising vector for the delivery and intracellular expression of recombinant antigens and can thus be considered as a new prototype vaccine formulation system. An interesting, and actively pursued, antigen in the context of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection prophylaxis (and therapy) is the CC chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) co-receptor, whose blockage by specific antibodies has been shown to inhibit both viral entry and cell-to-cell transmission of the virus. Building on our previous work on the BoHV-4 vector system, we have engineered and tested a replication-competent derivative of BoHV-4 (BoHV-4-CMV-hCCR5ΔTK) bearing a human CCR5 (hCCR5) expression cassette. We show here that CCR5 is indeed expressed at high levels in multiple types of BoHV-4-CMV-hCCR5ΔTK-infected cells. More importantly, two intravenous inoculations of CCR5-expressing BoHV-4 virions into rabbits led to the production of anti-CCR5 antibodies capable of reacting with the CCR5 receptor exposed on the surface of HEK293T cells through specific recognition of the amino-terminal region (aa 14-34) of the protein. Given the growing interest for anti-CCR5 immunization as an HIV control strategy and the many advantages of virus-based immunogen formulations (especially for poorly immunogenic or self-antigens), the results reported in this study provide preliminary validation of BoHV-4 as a safe viral vector suitable for CCR5 vaccination.

Frontiers in Veterinary Science

Journal of Hematology & Oncology

Background The oncolytic viruses have shown promising results for the treatment of multiple myelo... more Background The oncolytic viruses have shown promising results for the treatment of multiple myeloma. However, the use of human viruses is limited by the patients’ antiviral immune response. In this study, we investigated an alternative oncolytic strategy using non-human pathogen viruses as the bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) that were able to interact with CD46. Methods We treated several human myeloma cell lines and non-myeloma cell lines with BVDV to evaluate the expression of CD46 and to study the effect on cell viability by flow cytometry. The possible synergistic effect of bortezomib in combination with BVDV was also tested. Moreover, we infected the bone marrow mononuclear cells obtained from myeloma patients and we checked the BVDV effect on different cell populations, defined by CD138, CD14, CD3, CD19, and CD56 expression evaluated by flow cytometry. Finally, the in vivo BVDV effect was tested in NOD-SCID mice injected subcutaneously with myeloma cell lines. Results Human...

Frontiers in Immunology

East Coast Fever (ECF), caused by the tick-borne apicomplexan parasite Theileria parva, is a lead... more East Coast Fever (ECF), caused by the tick-borne apicomplexan parasite Theileria parva, is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in cattle of sub-Saharan Africa. The infection and treatment method (ITM) is currently the only vaccine available to control T. parva. Although ITM elicits levels of protection, its widespread adoption is limited by costs, laborious production process, and antibiotic co-treatment requirement, necessitating the development of a more sustainable vaccine. To this end, efforts have been concentrated in the identification of new T. parva vaccine antigens and in the development of suitable platforms for antigen expression. In this study, we investigated the molecular and antigenic properties of T. parva antigen Tp9 expressed by mammalian cells. Data indicate that Tp9 contains a signal peptide that is weakly functional in mammalian cells. Thus, Tp9 secretion from mammalian cells increased 10-fold after the native signal peptide was replaced with the human tissue plasminogen activator signal peptide (tPA). Sera from all T. parva-immune cattle recognized this recombinant, secreted Tp9. Additionally, PBMC from ITM-immunized cattle produced significant (p < 0.05) amounts of IFNγ following ex vivo exposure to Tp9, but this response varied between cattle of different MHC class I and class II genotypes. In addition, depletion experiments demonstrated that IFNγ to Tp9 was primarily produced by CD4 + T cells. Molecular analysis demonstrated that Tp9 presents a signal peptide that is weakly functional in mammalian cells, suggesting that it remains within lymphocytes during infection. Tp9 secretion from mammalian cells was substantially increased when the tPA secretion signal sequence was substituted for the native secretion signal sequence. Using full-length, recombinant Tp9 secreted from mammalian cells, we demonstrated that T. parva-immune cattle develop both humoral and cellular immune responses to this antigen. Collectively, these results provide rationale for further evaluation of Tp9 as a component of a T. parva subunit vaccine.

Molecular Nutrition & Food Research

Vaccines

Nipah virus (NiV) is an emergent pathogen capable of causing acute respiratory illness and fatal ... more Nipah virus (NiV) is an emergent pathogen capable of causing acute respiratory illness and fatal encephalitis in pigs and humans. A high fatality rate and broad host tropism makes NiV a serious public and animal health concern. There is therefore an urgent need for a NiV vaccines to protect animals and humans. In this study we investigated the immunogenicity of bovine herpesvirus (BoHV-4) vectors expressing either NiV attachment (G) or fusion (F) glycoproteins, BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-GΔTK or BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-FΔTK, respectively in pigs. The vaccines were benchmarked against a canarypox (ALVAC) vector expressing NiV G, previously demonstrated to induce protective immunity in pigs. Both BoHV-4 vectors induced robust antigen-specific antibody responses. BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-GΔTK stimulated NiV-neutralizing antibody titers comparable to ALVAC NiV G and greater than those induced by BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-FΔTK. In contrast, only BoHV-4-A-CMV-NiV-FΔTK immunized pigs had antibodies capable of significantly...

Blood

422 Multiple myeloma (MM) is characterized by the accumulation of malignant plasmacells into the ... more 422 Multiple myeloma (MM) is characterized by the accumulation of malignant plasmacells into the bone marrow (BM) microenvironment that supports their growth and survival. Particularly, an increase of BM angiogenesis occurs in relationship with plasmacells infiltration playing a critical role in the progression on monoclonal gammopathy. Hypoxia is known to be associated to angiogenesis in solid tumors as well as the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α is a critical trigger and regulator of the angiogenic switch. Actually, the oxygen levels in the BM of patients with monoclonal gammopathy as well the effects of hypoxia and HIF-1α on the gene expression and pro-angiogenic profile of CD138+ cells are not known. In this study, first, we investigated the level of BM oxygen saturation (sO2) and partial pressure (pO2) in a cohort of 44 patients with monoclonal gammopathy at the diagnosis including active MM (n°=25), smoldering MM (n° = 8) and MGUS (n°=11) showing that BM of MM patients was h...

Blood

3927 Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α is a critical trigger and regulator of tumor associated an... more 3927 Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α is a critical trigger and regulator of tumor associated angiogenesis. It has been previously reported that bone marrow (BM) microenvironment is hypoxic in multiple myeloma (MM) patients and that HIF-1α is overexpressed by CD138+ MM cells and modulates the transcriptional and pro-angiogenic profiles of MM cells. The potential role of HIF-1α as a therapeutic target in MM is under investigation. To deepen this issue, in this study we explored the effect of a stable HIF-1α inhibition in MM cells on cell proliferation, survival and on MM-induced angiogenesis either in vitro or in vivo using a plasmocytoma model. Human myeloma cell lines (HMCL)s were screened for HIF-1α protein expression in normoxia condition finding that 2 out 5 HMCLs were positive (JJN3 and RPMI-8226). Anti-HIF-1α Lentivirus sh RNA pool was used for HIF-1α stable knock-out in human myeloma cell lines (HMCL)s whereas the pKLO.1 lentiviral vector was used as the empty control vector...

Blood

The immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs®) exert an anti-myeloma effect by cereblon-dependent destructio... more The immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs®) exert an anti-myeloma effect by cereblon-dependent destruction of IKZF proteinseither through a direct action on multiple myeloma (MM) cells or through indirect immunomodulatory and anti-angiogenic effects.Previous data indicated that MM cells overexpress hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-1α and that HIF-1α suppression significantly blocks MM-induced angiogenesis and reduces in vivo tumoral burden in MM mouse models. Interestingly, it has been recently reported that HIF-1α knock-down in MM cells potentiates the in vitro effect of Lenalidomide (LEN) on cell proliferation without changing cell viability and that LEN is not able to suppress HIF-1α expression in MM cells. These evidences give the rationale design to investigate the in vivo effect of HIF-1α stable suppression in MM cells on LEN sensitivity. Thus, in this study, we assessed the effect of LEN in vivo in combination with HIF-1α inhibition in a non-obese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficie...

Blood

2947 It has been previously reported that bone marrow (BM) microenvironment is hypoxic in multipl... more 2947 It has been previously reported that bone marrow (BM) microenvironment is hypoxic in multiple myeloma (MM) patients and that hypoxia inducible factor (HIF)-1α is overexpressed by MM cells. However, the potential role of HIF-1α as a therapeutic target in MM is not known and is currently under investigation. In this study we explored the effect of persistent HIF-1α inhibition by expression of a lentivirus shRNA pool in MM cells on proliferation, survival and transcriptional and pro-angiogenic profiles of MM cells either in vitro or in vivo in mouse models. A HIF-1α Lentivirus shRNA pool was used for HIF-1α stable knock-down in human myeloma cell lines (HMCL)s and the pKLO.1 lentiviral vector was used as the empty control vector. HMCLs were infected and then selected with puromycin. Selected clones were screened for HIF-1α, HIF-1β, HIF-2α and HIF-3α. The transcriptional profiles were evaluated in the HMCL JJN3 cells transduced with shRNA forHIF-1α (JJN3-anti-HIF-1α) and on those i...