1,720,954 research outputs found
Plant viral vaccine delivery as a platform to induce cellular immunity against cancer antigens
No full textImmunotherapy with immunostimulatory antibodies has become a breakthrough therapeutic modality for solid tumours. However, only up to 50% of patients benefit and hence there is a renewed interest to vaccination to direct the immune attack against tumour antigens to widen the range of patients who benefit. Modern vaccine platforms such as viral-like particles have already demonstrated success in cancer prevention and the challenge is now to harness these approaches in patients with established malignancies. We have focused on a novel vaccine platform utilising a plant viral particle (PVP), which has been previously demonstrated that this single strand RNA (ssRNA) containing vaccine activated the immune mechanisms closely resembling the natural antiviral defence. Based on our previous mouse work, with sensing of viral RNA by plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), IFN-α was generated to activate conventional DCs (cDCs), and then prime Th1 immunity. We also confirmed that PVP with ssRNA packaged inside was capable to activate human DCs. The induction of anti-tumour antibody was another outcome. Subsequently, we explored this vaccine platform for induction of cellular responses against defined cancer targets. Initially using PVP loaded with a single model peptide, the induction of a rapid CD8 response of high magnitude was represented. In order to extend the application of this platform, the clinically relevant cancer testis antigens MAGEC1 and PASD1 were set as vaccine targets. In HLA-A2 transgenic (HHD) mouse model, PVP simultaneously targeting MAGEC1 and PASD1 induced CTLs, which were able to lyse human cancer cells expressing these antigens. We were accordingly keen to expend applicability to patient cohorts beyond HLA-A2+ patients, PVP loaded with whole protein antigens was subsequently tested. The vaccine induced CD8 and CD4 T-cell responses against epitopes delivered through the whole antigen were both detected. Of these, this flexible and economical platform can be adapted easily to deliver any antigenic peptides including multiple epitopes as well as whole proteins and may provide a universal platform for vaccination against cancer
Linked CD4 T cell help: broadening immune attack against cancer by vaccination
No full textIn the last decade, immunotherapy with monoclonal antibodies targeting immunological check points has become a breakthrough therapeutic modality for solid cancers. However, only up to 50 % of patients benefit from this powerful approach. For others vaccination might provide a plausible addition or alternative. For induction of effective anticancer immunity CD4+ T cell help is required, which is often difficult to induce to self cancer targets because of tolerogenic mechanisms. Our approach for cancer vaccines has been to incorporate into the vaccine design sequences able to activate foreign T cell help, through genetically linking cancer targets to microbial sequences (King et al. in Nat Med 4(11):1281–1286, 1998; Savelyeva et al. in Nat Biotechnol 19(8):760–764, 2001). This harnesses the non-tolerized CD4 T cell repertoire available in patients to help induction of effective immunity against fused cancer antigens. Multiple immune effector mechanisms including antibody, CD8+ T cells as well as CD4 effector T cells can be activated using this strategy. Delivery via DNA vaccines has already indicated clinical efficacy. The same principle of linked T cell help has now been transferred to other novel vaccine modalities to further potentiate immunity against cancer targets
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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