An MVA Vector Expressing HIV-1 Envelope under the Control of a Potent Vaccinia Virus Promoter as a Promising Strategy in HIV/AIDS Vaccine Design

Highly attenuated poxviral vectors, such as modified vaccinia virus ankara (MVA), are promising vaccine candidates against several infectious diseases. One of the approaches developed to enhance the immunogenicity of poxvirus vectors is increasing the promoter strength and accelerating during infection production levels of heterologous antigens. Here, we have generated and characterized the biology and immunogenicity of an optimized MVA-based vaccine candidate against HIV/AIDS expressing HIV-1 clade B gp120 protein under the control of a novel synthetic late/early optimized (LEO) promoter (LEO160 promoter; with a spacer length of 160 nucleotides), termed MVA-LEO160-gp120. In infected cells, MVA-LEO160-gp120 significantly increased the expression levels of HIV-1 gp120 mRNA and protein, compared to the clinical vaccine MVA-B vector expressing HIV-1 gp120 under the control of the commonly used synthetic early/late promoter. When mice were immunized with a heterologous DNA-prime/MVA-boost protocol, the immunization group DNA-gp120/MVA-LEO160-gp120 induced an enhancement in the magnitude of gp120-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses, compared to DNA-gp120/MVA-B; with most of the responses being mediated by the CD8+ T-cell compartment, with a T effector memory phenotype. DNA-gp120/MVA-LEO160-gp120 also elicited a trend to a higher magnitude of gp120-specific CD4+ T follicular helper cells, and modest enhanced levels of antibodies against HIV-1 gp120. These findings revealed that this new optimized vaccinia virus promoter could be considered a promising strategy in HIV/AIDS vaccine design, confirming the importance of early expression of heterologous antigen and its impact on the antigen-specific immunogenicity elicited by poxvirus-based vectors.

Cloning of the Self-incompatibility SFB Gene from Chinese Apricot ‘Xiaobaixing’ and Construction of the SFB Expression Vectors

Three kinds of expression vectors of a pollen-S determinant were constructed to provide a reference for molecular breeding of self-compatible (SC) Prunus species. An S-haplotype-specific F-box (SFB) protein gene from the ‘Xiaobaixing’ apricot (Prunus armeniaca) was cloned by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and 3′-rapid-amplification of cDNA ends (3′-RACE). A 1136-bp sequence complementary to the 3′-end of the cDNA (GenBank accession number KP938528.2) with a 912-bp complete open reading frame (ORF) was obtained. The deduced amino acid sequence contained an F-box domain, two variable regions, and two hypervariable regions with structural characteristics similar to SFB in other Rosaceae plants. Sense, antisense, and RNA interference (RNAi) vectors for SFB were constructed by enzyme restriction. The target fragment was restricted using the corresponding restriction enzyme and then directionally inserted between the 35S cauliflower mosaic virus promoter and the nopaline synthase terminator (NOS-ter) of the expression vector pCAMBIA-35S-MCS-NOS-NPTII. The intron-containing hairpin RNA (ihpRNA) was obtained by fusion PCR. The constructed vectors were transferred into Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain LBA4404 by freezing/thawing. The RNAi vector of SFB was also transformed in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). The successful construction of these three expression vectors provides a basis for transforming ‘Xiaobaixing’ apricot and the breeding of SC Prunus cultivars.

Heregulin Co-opts PR Transcriptional Action Via Stat3 Role As a Coregulator to Drive Cancer Growth

Accumulated findings have demonstrated the presence of bidirectional interactions between progesterone receptor (PR) and the ErbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases signaling pathways in breast cancer. We previously revealed signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (Stat3) as a nodal convergence point between said signaling pathways proving that Stat3 is activated by one of the ErbBs' ligands, heregulin (HRG)β1 via ErbB2 and through the co-option of PR as a signaling molecule. Here, we found that HRGβ1 induced Stat3 recruitment to the promoters of the progestin-regulated cell cycle modulators Bcl-XL and p21CIP1 and also stimulated Stat3 binding to the mouse mammary tumor virus promoter, which carries consensus progesterone response elements. Interestingly, HRGβ1-activated Stat3 displayed differential functions on PR activity depending on the promoter bound. Indeed, Stat3 was required for PR binding in bcl-X, p21CIP1, and c-myc promoters while exerting a PR coactivator function on the mouse mammary tumor virus promoter. Stat3 also proved to be necessary for HRGβ1-induced in vivo tumor growth. Our results endow Stat3 a novel function as a coregulator of HRGβ1-activated PR to promote breast cancer growth. These findings underscore the importance of understanding the complex interactions between PR and other regulatory factors, such as Stat3, that contribute to determine the context-dependent transcriptional actions of PR.