Università della Svizzera italiana

The antibody response to Plasmodium falciparum : cues for vaccine design and the discovery of receptor-based antibodies

Tan, Joshua ; Piccoli, Luca ; Lanzavecchia, Antonio

In: Annual Review of Immunology

P. falciparum remains a serious public health problem and a continuous challenge for the immune system due to the complexity and diversity of the pathogen. Recent advances from several laboratories in the characterization of the antibody response to the parasite have led to the identification of critical targets for protection and revealed a new mechanism of diversification based on the...

Università della Svizzera italiana

ERK phosphorylation and miR-181a expression modulate activation of human memory TH17 cells

Mele, Federico ; Basso, Camilla ; Leoni, Cristina ; Aschenbrenner, Dominik ; Becattini, Simone ; Latorre, Daniela ; Lanzavecchia, Antonio ; Sallusto, Federica ; Monticelli, Silvia

In: Nature communications, 2015, vol. 6, p. 6431

T helper (TH) cell polarization during priming is modulated by a number of signals, but whether polarization to a given phenotype also influences recall responses of memory TH cells is relatively unknown. Here we show that miR-181a is selectively induced in both human and mouse naive T cells differentiating into the TH17, but not TH1 or TH2 subset. In human memory TH17 cells, miR-181a...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Rational engineering of a human anti-dengue antibody through experimentally validated computational docking

Simonelli, Luca ; Pedotti, Mattia ; Beltramello, Martina ; Livoti, Elsa ; Calzolai, Luigi ; Sallusto, Federica ; Lanzavecchia, Antonio ; Varani, Luca

In: Plos one, 2013, vol. 8, no. 2, p. e55561

Antibodies play an increasing pivotal role in both basic research and the biopharmaceutical sector, therefore technology for characterizing and improving their properties through rational engineering is desirable. This is a difficult task thought to require high-resolution x-ray structures, which are not always available. We, instead, use a combination of solution NMR epitope mapping and ...