Browsing by Author "Davis, Mark M."

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    A TLR7-nanoparticle adjuvant promotes a broad immune response against heterologous strains of influenza and SARS-CoV-2
    (Springer Nature, 2023) Yin, Qian; Luo, Wei; Mallajosyula, Vamsee; Bo, Yang; Guo, Jing; Xie, Jinghang; Sun, Meng; Verma, Rohit; Li, Chunfeng; Constantz, Christian M.; Wagar, Lisa E.; Li, Jing; Sola, Elsa; Gupta, Neha; Wang, Chunlin; Kask, Oliver; Chen, Xin; Yuan, Xue; Wu, Nicholas C.; Rao, Jianghong; Chien, Yueh-hsiu; Cheng, Jianjun; Pulendran, Bali; Davis, Mark M.; Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine
    The ideal vaccine against viruses such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2 must provide a robust, durable and broad immune protection against multiple viral variants. However, antibody responses to current vaccines often lack robust cross-reactivity. Here we describe a polymeric Toll-like receptor 7 agonist nanoparticle (TLR7-NP) adjuvant, which enhances lymph node targeting, and leads to persistent activation of immune cells and broad immune responses. When mixed with alum-adsorbed antigens, this TLR7-NP adjuvant elicits cross-reactive antibodies for both dominant and subdominant epitopes and antigen-specific CD8+ T-cell responses in mice. This TLR7-NP-adjuvanted influenza subunit vaccine successfully protects mice against viral challenge of a different strain. This strategy also enhances the antibody response to a SARS-CoV-2 subunit vaccine against multiple viral variants that have emerged. Moreover, this TLR7-NP augments antigen-specific responses in human tonsil organoids. Overall, we describe a nanoparticle adjuvant to improve immune responses to viral antigens, with promising implications for developing broadly protective vaccines.
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    Cell-surface Milieu Remodeling in Human Dendritic Cell Activation
    (The American Association of Immunologists, 2024) Udeshi, Namrata D.; Xu, Charles; Jiang, Zuzhi; Gao, Shihong Max; Yin, Qian; Luo, Wei; Carr, Steven A.; Davis, Mark M.; Li, Jiefu; Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine
    Dendritic cells (DCs) are specialized sentinel and APCs coordinating innate and adaptive immunity. Through proteins on their cell surface, DCs sense changes in the environment, internalize pathogens, present processed Ags, and communicate with other immune cells. By combining chemical labeling and quantitative mass spectrometry, we systematically profiled and compared the cell-surface proteomes of human primary conventional DCs (cDCs) in their resting and activated states. TLR activation by a lipopeptide globally reshaped the cell-surface proteome of cDCs, with >100 proteins upregulated or downregulated. By simultaneously elevating positive regulators and reducing inhibitory signals across multiple protein families, the remodeling creates a cell-surface milieu promoting immune responses. Still, cDCs maintain the stimulatory-to-inhibitory balance by leveraging a distinct set of inhibitory molecules. This analysis thus uncovers the molecular complexity and plasticity of the cDC cell surface and provides a roadmap for understanding cDC activation and signaling.