Safety and immunogenicity of 2-dose heterologous Ad26.ZEBOV,MVA-BN-Filo Ebola vaccination in children and adolescents in Africa: A randomised,placebo-controlled,multicentre Phase II clinical trial

BackgroundReoccurring Ebola outbreaks in West and Central Africa have led to serious illness and death in thousands of adults and children. The objective of this study was to assess safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of the heterologous 2-dose Ad26.ZEBOV, MVA-BN-Filo vaccination regimen in adolescents and children in Africa.Methods and findingsIn this multicentre, randomised, observer-blind, placebo-controlled Phase II study, 131 adolescents (12 to 17 years old) and 132 children (4 to 11 years old) were enrolled from Eastern and Western Africa and randomised 5:1 to receive study vaccines or placebo. Vaccine groups received intramuscular injections of Ad26.ZEBOV (5 × 10¹⁰ viral particles) and MVA-BN-Filo (1 × 10⁸ infectious units) 28 or 56 days apart; placebo recipients received saline. Primary outcomes were safety and tolerability. Solicited adverse events (AEs) were recorded until 7 days after each vaccination and serious AEs (SAEs) throughout the study. Secondary and exploratory outcomes were humoral immune responses (binding and neutralising Ebola virus [EBOV] glycoprotein [GP]-specific antibodies), up to 1 year after the first dose. Enrolment began on February 26, 2016, and the date of last participant last visit was November 28, 2018. Of the 263 participants enrolled, 217 (109 adolescents, 108 children) received the 2-dose regimen, and 43 (20 adolescents, 23 children) received 2 placebo doses. Median age was 14.0 (range 11 to 17) and 7.0 (range 4 to 11) years for adolescents and children, respectively. Fifty-four percent of the adolescents and 51% of the children were male. All participants were Africans, and, although there was a slight male preponderance overall, the groups were well balanced. No vaccine-related SAEs were reported; solicited AEs were mostly mild/moderate. Twenty-one days post-MVA-BN-Filo vaccination, binding antibody responses against EBOV GP were observed in 100% of vaccinees (106 adolescents, 104 children). Geometric mean concentrations tended to be higher after the 56-day interval (adolescents 13,532 ELISA units [EU]/mL, children 17,388 EU/mL) than the 28-day interval (adolescents 6,993 EU/mL, children 8,007 EU/mL). Humoral responses persisted at least up to Day 365.A limitation of the study is that the follow-up period was limited to 365 days for the majority of the participants, and so it was not possible to determine whether immune responses persisted beyond this time period. Additionally, formal statistical comparisons were not preplanned but were only performed post hoc.ConclusionsThe heterologous 2-dose vaccination was well tolerated in African adolescents and children with no vaccine-related SAEs. All vaccinees displayed anti-EBOV GP antibodies after the 2-dose regimen, with higher responses in the 56-day interval groups. The frequency of pyrexia after vaccine or placebo was higher in children than in adolescents. These data supported the prophylactic indication against EBOV disease in a paediatric population, as licenced in the EU.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT02564523","term_id":"NCT02564523"}}NCT02564523.

Zacchaeus Anywaine and co-workers study safety and immunogenicity of an Ebola vaccine among children and adolescents across four African countries.     

Balancing oxidative protein folding: The influences of reducing pathways on disulfide bond formation

Oxidative protein folding is confined to few compartments, including the endoplasmic reticulum, the mitochondrial intermembrane space and the bacterial periplasm. Conversely, in compartments in which proteins are translated such as the cytosol, the mitochondrial matrix and the chloroplast stroma proteins are kept reduced by the thioredoxin and glutaredoxin systems that functionally overlap. The highly reducing NADPH pool thereby serves as electron donor that enables glutathione reductase and thioredoxin reductase to keep glutathione pools and thioredoxins in their reduced redox state, respectively. Notably, also compartments containing oxidizing machineries are linked to these reducing pathways. Reducing pathways aid in proofreading of disulfide bond formation by isomerization or they provide reducing equivalents for the reduction of disulfides prior to degradation. In addition, they contribute to the thiol-dependent regulation of protein activities, and they help to counteract oxidative stress. The existence of oxidizing and reducing pathways in the same compartment poses a potential problem as the cell has to avoid futile cycles of oxidation and subsequent reduction reactions. Thus, compartments that contain oxidizing machineries have developed sophisticated ways to spatiotemporally balance and regulate oxidation and reduction. In this review, we discuss oxidizing and reducing pathways in the endoplasmic reticulum, the periplasm and the mitochondrial intermembrane space and highlight the role of glutathione especially in the endoplasmic reticulum and the intermembrane space. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Thiol-Based Redox Processes.     

Regulation and Migratory Role of P-Selectin Ligands during Intestinal Inflammation

Dendritic cells from mesenteric lymph nodes (MLN) can convert retinal to retinoic acid (RA), which promotes induction of the gut-specific homing receptor α4β7. In contrast, priming within peripheral lymph nodes leads to upregulation of E- and P-selectin ligands (E- and P-lig). Apart from its α4β7 promoting effect, RA was shown to suppress E- and P-lig induction in vitro. However, enhanced frequencies of P-lig⁺ CD4⁺ T cells were reported during intestinal inflammation. To understand this contradiction, we first determined whether location of intestinal inflammation, that is, ileitis or colitis, affects P-lig induction. Both conditions promoted P-lig expression on CD4⁺ T cells; however, P-lig expressed on T cells facilitated Th1 cell recruitment only into the inflamed colon but not into inflamed small intestine induced by oral Toxoplasma gondii infection. A majority of P-lig⁺CD4⁺ T cells found within MLN during intestinal inflammation co-expressed α4β7 confirming their activation in the presence of RA. Mesenteric P-lig⁺CD4⁺ cells co-expressed the 130 kDa isoform of CD43 which requires activity of core 2 (beta)1,6-N-acetyl-glycosaminyltransferase-I (C2GlcNAcT-I) suggesting that C2GlcNAcT-I contributes to P-lig expression under these conditions. To test whether inflammatory mediators can indeed overrule the inhibitory effect of RA on P-lig expression we stimulated CD4⁺ T cells either polyclonal in the presence of IL-12 and IFNγ or by LPS-activated MLN-derived dendritic cells. Both conditions promoted P-lig induction even in the presence of RA. While RA impeded the induction of fucosyltransferase-VII it did not affect IL-12-dependent C2GlcNAcT-I induction suggesting that C2GlcNAcT-I can support P-lig expression even if fucosyltransferase-VII mRNA upregulation is dampened.     

Mycorrhizae of Entoloma saepium: parasitism or symbiosis?

The mycorrhizae of Entoloma saepium on Rosa sp. are comprehensively described and compared to other mycorrhizae of the genus Entoloma, as well as to similar unidentified mycorrhizae known from the literature. E. saepium appears to be more a parasite than a symbiont, as it invades and almost completely destroys the root meristem and young root cells.Considered as part IL of the series Studies on ectomycorrhizae; part XLVIII: Waller and Agerer (1993)     

MORPHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION AND GENETIC COHESIVENESS OVER A MICROENVIRONMENTAL GRADIENT IN THE MARINE SNAIL LITTORINA SAXATILIS

The marine gastropod Littorina saxatilis has different ecotypes in shores only a few meters apart. This has both taxonomic and evolutionary implications. Here we report on an extreme type of within-shore dimorphism in shell characters. In the wave-exposed rocky shores in northwestern Spain, we found one form of L. saxatilis in the upper-level barnacle zone. It had a white, ridged shell, with black bands in the grooves. Another form confined to the lower-shore mussel belt had a smooth shell that was either white and tessellated or darkly colored. These two forms cooccured in a narrow midshore zone together with individuals that had combined characters, but were present in low frequencies (11%–29%). We used principal-component analysis of metric shell characters to study variation in shell size and shape. We found that the upper-shore form was larger than the lower-shore form. We also found small but significant differences in shell shape. Experiments in a common laboratory environment suggested the differences in shell ornamentation and color are inherited, but the individuals did not develop the morph-specific characters until a shell height of about 3 mm. The occurrence of mainly two distinct forms may suggest the presence of two species that hybridize. An analysis of five polymorphic enzyme loci in populations of snails from three geographically separated sites indicated, however, that there was no positive correlation between morphological distances and genetic distances among populations on a geographic scale (tens of kilometers). Thus, we rejected the hypothesis of two species. However, on a microgeographic scale (meters), genetic differentiation between groups with the same form was less than differentiation between forms. This indicated a partial barrier to gene flow between the two forms, and preliminary mate choice data suggested this was caused by nonrandom mating in the midshore zone of overlap.     

Immunogenicity and immunosensitivity of ex vivo human carcinomas: interferon γ and tumour necrosis factor α treatment of tumour cells potentiates their interaction with autologous blood lymphocytes

Human carcinoma cells vary appreciably in the expression of MHC class I, class II, ICAM-1 (CD54) and B7 (CD80) molecules. Short-term in vitro exposure of ex vivo carcinoma cells to interferon and tumour necrosis factor elevated/induced the surface expression of MHC class I, class II and ICAM-1, but only rarely of B7. We found that cytokine treatment elevated the cytotoxic susceptibility and the stimulatory potential of ex vivo tumour cells. This was demonstrated (a) by the increased frequency and elevated level of auto-tumour lysis and (b) by induction of DNA synthesis and generation of cytotoxic lymphocytes in autologous mixed lymphocyte/tumour cell culture (MLTC). The MHC class I and ICAM-1 molecules on the tumour cells were required for interaction with the lymphocytes as indicated by the inhibitory effect of specific mAb both in the stimulation and in the cytotoxic tests. While the cytokine-induced increases in MHC and ICAM-1 on the low-expression tumours were probably important for the modification of functional interaction with the autologous lymphocytes, it is likely that alterations in other properties of tumour cells were also induced which contributed to the phenomenon. This was indicated by the results obtained with several tumours, which expressed indigenously high levels of these molecules but activated the autologous lymphocytes only after cytokine treatment. In several experiments the untreated targets that did not activate the lymphocytes were sensitive to the cytotoxicity of the effectors activated in MLTC. The results show that the afferent and efferent arms of the immune response have different requirements for functional interactions between lymphocytes and tumour cells.     

Radiation induced chromosomal instability in human T-lymphocytes

Chromosomal instability in proliferating mammalian cells is characterized by a persistent increase of chromosomal aberrations and rearrangements occurring de novo during successive cell generations. Recent results from many laboratories using a variety of cells and cytogenetic end points show that this phenotype can be induced by low as well as high LET irradiation. A typical feature of chromosomal instability in primary human G₀-lymphocytes exposed to γ-irradiation at both high dose rate (45 Gy h⁻¹) and low dose rate (0.024 Gy h⁻¹) is the appearance of novel aberrations in the clonal progeny of the irradiated cell, many generations after the exposure. The same phenotype was observed in lymphocytes that were allowed to recover for 5 days in G₀ after the radiation exposure, as well as in hprt-mutant T cell clones. These results demonstrate that neither the acute genotoxic stress caused by high dose rate as compared to low dose rate irradiation, nor a hypothesized conflict between mitogen induced growth stimulation and growth arrest due to radiation damage, seem to be critical conditions for the development chromosomal instability in these cells. In contrast to observations in other cells, no evidence of a persistent decrease of cloning ability was observed in the progeny of radiation-exposed human lymphocytes, and no alteration was observed in their sensitivity to a second radiation exposure. Furthermore, the frequency of CA-repeat length variation at three loci was not increased in the progeny of X-irradiated T cells as compared to non-irradiated cells, which indicates that microsatellite instability is not part of the chromosomal instability phenotype in human T-lymphocytes.