抗体应用

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-restricted presentation of self-peptides, generated from tissue-specific antigens, by thymic epithelial cells (TECs) is essential for development of central tolerance and for generation of the regulatory T-cell repertoire in the ...

Regulatory T cells play a central role in controlling homeostasis, and in inducing and maintaining tolerance to both foreign and self-antigens. Several types of T cells with regulatory activity have been described both in mice and humans, and those within the CD4+ subset have been extensively ...

Mature hematopoietic cells, like all other terminally differentiated lineages, arise during ontogeny via a series of increasingly restricted intermediates. Hematopoietic progenitors derive from the mesoderm, which gives rise to hemangioblasts that can differentiate in ...

Recent years have witnessed a progressive acceptance of the dual role played by dendritic cells (DC) in the initiation of immune responses and their specific attenuation through the induction of immunological tolerance. Nevertheless, as terminally differentiated cells of the mye ...

The emergence of bacterial pathogens resistant to current antibiotics has caused an urgent demand for new treatments. Peptide deformylase (PDF) has become an exciting target for designing novel antibiotics. To facilitate the screening of PDF inhibitors, three robust, coupled assa ...

This chapter is orgTreatment of Gram-negative bacterial infections is complicated by innate and acquired drug resistance resulting in a limited number of effective antibiotics. Several Gram-negative bacteria, for which current therapies are ineffective, have recently been i ...

Key enzymes that assemble the bacterial cell wall are also the target of the Β-lactam class of antibiotics. The covalent binding of labeled penicillin to these proteins has been used in numerous studies in drug discovery, antibiotic mechanisms of action and resistance, and cell wall physiolo ...

Widespread resistance to antibiotics in current clinical use is increasing at an alarming rate. Novel approaches in antimicrobial therapy will be required in the near future to maintain control of infectious diseases. An enormous array of small cationic peptides exists in nature as part of ...

Infections caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens play a major role in the morbidity and mortality of hospitalized patients. The rise of resistance to current antibiotic therapies has made the discovery of new agents urgent. One of the major antibiotic resistance mec ...

This chapter describes reliable flow cytometric methods for assessment of two important physiologic characteristics of bacteria, membrane potential and membrane permeability, which can provide indications of the effects of antimicrobial agents on microorganisms.

Fatty acid biosynthesis is one of the relatively newer targets in antibacterial drug discovery. The presence of distinct fatty acid synthases (FAS) in mammals and bacteria and the fact that most bacterial FAS enzymes are essential for viability make this a very attractive antimicrobial dr ...

Resistance to antibiotics that target the bacterial ribosome is often conferred by methylation at specific nucleotides in the rRNA. The nucleotides that become methylated are invariably key sites of antibiotic interaction. The addition of methyl groups to each of these nucleotides is ...

Bacterial signal transduction systems can be used as drug targets. The signal transduction targets fall into two groups–-sensor kinases and response regulators. Previously reported studies describe hits that were thought to inactivate sensor kinases but on closer examination we ...

The ability, either innate or acquired, to produce β-lactamases, enzymes capable of hydrolyzing the endocyclic peptide bond in β-lactam antibiotics, would appear to be a primary contributor to the ever-increasing incidences of resistance to this class of antibiotics. To date, four dist ...

The complete genome sequences of about 300 bacteria (mostly pathogenic) have been determined, and many more such projects are currently in progress. The detection of bacterial genes that are non-homologous to human genes and are essential for the survival of the pathogen represent a promis ...

DNA gyrase and DNA topoisomerase (topo) IV are the bacterial targets of coumarin and quinolone antimicrobial agents. Widespread resistance to clinically important antibiotics such as beta-lactams and macrolides has stimulated the development of novel gyrase and topo IV inhibit ...

Aminoglycoside antibiotics are highly potent, wide-spectrum bactericidals (1, 2). Bacterial resistance to aminoglycosides, however, is a major problem in the clinical use of aminoglycosides. Enzymatic modification of aminoglycosides is the most frequent resistance mode am ...

RNA polymerase is essential to the viability of bacteria in all phases of growth and development and is a proven chemotherapeutic target as the cellular target of the rifamycin class of antibiotics. However, despite the characterization of multiple different classes of natural products ...

The need for new drugs to treat infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains has prompted many studies to identify novel targets in pathogenic bacteria. Among the three DNA polymerases expressed by bacteria, one of these, designated pol III, is responsible for DNA replic ...

Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aa-RS) attracted interest as potential targets for new antibacterial compounds. Most organisms express 20 aa-RSs: one for each amino acid. Aa-RSs are essential proteins in all living organisms. When one aa-RS is inhibited, the corresponding tRNA is not char ...