Tools for surveying and improving the quality of life: people with special needs in focus.

PURPOSE: This article seeks to describe online tools for surveying and improving quality of life for people with disabilities living in assisted living centers and special education service organizations. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Ensuring a decent quality of life for disabled people is an important welfare state goal. Using well-accepted quality of life conceptions, online diagnostic and planning tools were developed during an Institute for Education, University of Zurich, research project. FINDINGS: The diagnostic tools measure, evaluate and analyze disabled people's quality of life. The planning tools identify factors that can affect their quality of life and suggest improvements. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: Instrument validity and reliability are not tested according to the standard statistical procedures. This will be done at a more advanced stage of the project. Instead, the tool is developed, refined and adjusted in cooperation with practitioners who are constantly judging it according to best practice standards. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The tools support staff in assisted living centers and special education service organizations. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: These tools offer comprehensive resources for surveying, quantifying, evaluating, describing and simulating quality of life elements.

Peptide-loaded chimeric influenza virosomes for efficient in vivo induction of cytotoxic T cells.

Virus-specific CD8(+) T cells are thought to play an important role in resolving acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection as viral clearance has been associated with a strong and sustained CD8(+) T cell response. During the chronic state of HCV infection virus-specific T cells have a low frequency and a reduced responsiveness. Based on this, a therapeutic vaccine increasing the frequency of specific T cells is a promising alternative for the treatment of chronic HCV infection. We improved an existing vaccine platform based on immunopotentiating reconstituted influenza virosomes (IRIVs) for efficient delivery of peptide epitopes to the MHC class I antigen presentation pathway. IRIVs are proteoliposomes composed of phospholipids and influenza surface glycoproteins. Due to their fusogenic activity, IRIVs are able to deliver encapsulated macromolecules, e.g. peptides to immunocompetent cells. We developed a novel method based on chimeric virosomes [chimeric immunopotentiating reconstituted influenza virosomes (CIRIVs)] combining the high peptide-encapsulation capacity of liposomes and the fusion activity of virosomes. This new approach resulted in a 30-fold increase of the amount of incorporated soluble peptide compared with current preparation methods. To study the immunogenicity of chimeric virosomes HLA-A2.1 transgenic mice were immunized with CIRIVs containing the HCV Core132 peptide. Core132-CIRIVs efficiently induced specific cytotoxic and IFNgamma-producing T cells already with low peptide doses. Vaccine formulations, which include combinations of different HCV-derived CTL epitopes could be used to induce not only a strong but also a multi-specific CTL response, making them potential candidates for therapeutic and maybe prophylactic T cell vaccines in humans.