ABSTRACT
HIV develops drug resistance at a high rate under drug selection pressure. Resistance tests are recommended to help physicians optimize antiretroviral drug therapies. For this purpose, genotypic and phenotypic tests have been developed. In order to propose a new phenotypic test that will be less laborious, expensive, and time consuming than the standard ones, a new procedure to measure HIV-1 protease susceptibility to protease inhibitor (PIs) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cells was developed. This procedure is based on HIV-1 protease expression in yeast. While the viral protein induces yeast cell death, its inhibition by PIs in the culture medium allows the cell to grow in a dose-dependent manner. In a comparative study of standard genotypic analysis vs. yeast cell-based phenotypic tests, performed on HIV-1 protease coding DNA in 17 different plasma samples from infected individuals, a clear match was found between the results obtained using the two technologies. This suggests that the yeast-based procedure is at least as accurate as standard genotypic test in defining susceptibility to protease inhibitors. This encouraging result should be the basis for large-scale validation of the new phenotypic resistance test.
Subject(s)
Anti-HIV Agents/pharmacology , HIV Protease Inhibitors/pharmacology , HIV Protease/biosynthesis , HIV-1/enzymology , Microbial Sensitivity Tests/methods , Microbial Viability/drug effects , HIV Protease/genetics , HIV Protease/toxicity , Humans , Recombinant Proteins/biosynthesis , Recombinant Proteins/genetics , Recombinant Proteins/toxicity , Saccharomyces cerevisiae/genetics , Saccharomyces cerevisiae/physiologyABSTRACT
Programmed death 1 (PD-1) is a lymphoid receptor that negatively regulates immune responses. PD-1 expression was recently reported in some T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) subtypes, but the expression profile of PD-1 and its ligands (PD-L1 and PD-L2) in B-NHLs remains largely to be characterized. To investigate this issue, monoclonal antibodies against PD-1, PD-L1, and PD-L2 were generated by immunization of balb-c mice. A series of 161 lymphoma tissue and 11 blood samples was analyzed using either immunohistochemistry or flow cytometry. In reactive lymph nodes, PD-1 was mainly expressed in follicular T cells. In B-NHLs, PD-1 was mainly expressed in reactive T cells; but expression was also noted in neoplastic B cells from small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL, 12/13), grade III follicular lymphoma (3/3), and diffuse large cell lymphoma (2/25). In contrast, neoplastic B cells from mantle cell lymphoma (0/11), marginal zone lymphoma (0/12), Burkitt lymphoma (0/3), and grade 1 to 2 follicular lymphoma (0/40) were PD-1 negative. PD-L1 and PD-L2 were negative in small B-cell lymphomas, including B-SLL. Flow cytometry showed that blood cells from chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) also displayed PD-1 expression, which could be increased by CD40 stimulation. PD-1 expression in T-NHLs was restricted to the angioimmunoblastic subtype (8/8). These results show that PD-1 expression among B-NHLs is mainly associated with SLL/CLL and is influenced by activation of the CD40/CD40L pathway. Because the anti-PD-1.6.4 antibody works on paraffin sections, it represents a useful tool to differentiate SLL/CLL from other small B-cell lymphomas.
Subject(s)
Antigens, CD/metabolism , Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins/metabolism , Biomarkers, Tumor/metabolism , Immunoblastic Lymphadenopathy/metabolism , Leukemia, Lymphocytic, Chronic, B-Cell/metabolism , Lymphoma, T-Cell/metabolism , Animals , Diagnosis, Differential , Flow Cytometry , Immunoblastic Lymphadenopathy/diagnosis , Leukemia, Lymphocytic, Chronic, B-Cell/diagnosis , Lymph Nodes/metabolism , Lymph Nodes/pathology , Lymphoma, T-Cell/diagnosis , Mice , Mice, Inbred BALB C , Programmed Cell Death 1 ReceptorABSTRACT
Gastric lipase is active under acidic conditions and shows optimum activity on insoluble triglycerides at pH 4. The present results show that gastric lipase also acts in solution on vinyl butyrate, with an optimum activity above pH 7, which suggests that gastric lipase is able to hydrolyze ester bonds via the classical mechanism of serine hydrolases. These results support previous structural studies in which the catalytic triad of gastric lipase was reported to show no specific features. The optimum activity of gastric lipase shifted toward lower pH values, however, when the vinyl butyrate concentration was greater than the solubility limit. Experiments performed with long-chain triglycerides showed that gastric lipase binds optimally to the oil-water interface at low pH values. To study the effects of the pH on the adsorption step independently from substrate hydrolysis, gastric lipase adsorption on solid hydrophobic surfaces was monitored by total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF), as well as using a quartz crystal microbalance. Both techniques showed a pH-dependent reversible gastric lipase adsorption process, which was optimum at pH 5 (Kd = 6.5 nM). Lipase adsorption and desorption constants (ka = 147,860 M(-1) s(-1) and kd = 139 x 10(-4) s(-1) at pH 6) were estimated from TIRF experiments. These results indicate that the optimum activity of gastric lipase at acidic pH is only "apparent" and results from the fact that lipase adsorption at lipid-water interfaces is the pH-dependent limiting step in the overall process of insoluble substrate hydrolysis. This specific kinetic feature of interfacial enzymology should be taken into account when studying any soluble enzyme acting on an insoluble substrate.
