Although the dermatologic community rarely uses "Weber-Christian Disease" as a diagnosis, it still appears in the internal medicine literature. Herein we present a patient with recurrent cutaneous and subcutaneous nodules who was initially treated with aggressive immunosupression for a presumptive diagnosis of Weber-Christian Disease. After more th...
It is not clear why the N-terminal autoantigenic determinant of myelin basic protein (MBP), Ac1-9, is dominant in the B1O.PL (H-2(u)) mouse, given its weak I-A(u)-MHC binding affinity. Similarly, how do high-affinity T cells specific for this determinant avoid negative selection? Because the MBP:1-9 sequence is embryonically expressed uniquely in t...
T lymphocytes play a central role in the pathogenesis of a large number of human conditions including autoimmunity and graft rejection. Although T cells are key players in mounting immune responses, the assessment of T cell repertoires has yet to find an important role in clinical decision making. In this review, we discuss the "immunoscope" techni...
Ever since the emergence of models for the processing and presentation of antigenic determinants by MHC class II molecules, the main view has been that proteins are unfolded, enzymatically cleaved into peptide lengths of about 12-25 amino acids and then loaded onto MHC class II molecules. There is, however, an alternative model stating that partial...
The consensus view about the constitution of the T cell receptor repertoire has shifted greatly even during this decade. Although the discovery of autoimmunity in the fifties had clearly shown that a repertoire must exist directed against self antigens, the extent of this repertoire was not fully appreciated. In our work we have tried to elucidate ...
Cells from animals, plants and single cells are enclosed by a barrier called the cell membrane that separates the cytoplasm from the outside. Cell layers such as epithelia also form a barrier that separates the inside from the outside or different compartments of multicellular organisms. A key feature of these barriers is the differential distribut...
Severe tissue necrosis with a retarded wound healing process is a major symptom of a cobra snakebite. Cardiotoxins (CTXs) are major components of cobra venoms that belong to the Ly-6 protein family and are implicated in tissue damage. The interaction of the major CTX from Taiwan cobra, i.e. CTX A3, with sulfatides in the cell membrane has recently ...