S. Wu et al. / J. Biomedical Science and Engineering 3 (2010) 543-549 549
Copyright © 2010 SciRes. JBiSE
4. CONCLUSIONS
Superantigens are powerful activator of T-cell. Distinct
from ordinary antigens, superantigens can directly attach
to the outer groove of MHC-II and Vβ domain of TCR
on T-cell surface, without the processing by antigen
presentation cells. Even a trace amount of superantigen
can activate 5%-20% of T-cells. Therefore, superanti-
gens have been tried in cancer immune therapy to pro-
mote internal anticancer immunity. Good results have
been obtained from these trials. However, it has also
been found that superantigen may induce apoptosis and
inability after activating T-cells, leading to the attenua-
tion of response to additional stimulation. This property
of tolerance induction limits the efficacy of superanti-
gens. Therefore, we have used rSEA to immunized mice,
studied the characteristics of rSEA induced specific hu-
moral immunity and cellular immunity and the mecha-
nism of anergy. These studies could provide foundations
for further studies of superantigens as tumor suppressors.
rSEA has superantigen properties and that it can in-
duce powerful humoral and cellular immune responses.
However, boosting immunization with rSEA caused an-
ergy through PD-1 mediated inhibition.
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge research funding from the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 30770340,30470281 ), the
national major program of Science and technology for water pollution
control and restoration in china (Grant No. 2009ZX07423-003) and
Shenzhen Grant Plan for Science and Technology.
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