Each experiment was replicated twice. Serum autoantibodies were assayed using ELISA. Briefly, BSA-precoated plates (Immulon II, Dynatech)

were incubated with calf dsDNA or ssDNA (both at 50 μg/mL and from Sigma-Aldrich), histone H1, histones H2A and H2B (all at 10 μg/mL and from Boehringer Mannheim) respectively overnight at 4°C. After blocked with nonfat-milk (3%), diluted mouse serum was added for 2 h at room temperature. Bound IgG was detected using HRP-conjugated anti-mouse IgG (Southernbiotech, AL). Hep-2 cells (Bion) were stained with diluted serum for 30 min followed by FITC-conjugated anti-mouse IgG (BD PharMingen) PD0332991 for 10 min to detect ANA. Kidney tissues were fixed with 10% formalin, embedded in paraffin, and stained with PAS reagent. Cryostat kidney

sections were air-dried, fixed with cold acetone, stained with FITC-conjugated anti-mouse IgG, and visualized with fluorescence microscope (Leica). Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software, and p<0.05 was considered of statistical significance. We thank Ms. Jinxia Jiang for the excellent technical assistance. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30771985, 30731160623 and 30721091), the National High Biotechnology Development Program of China (2007AA021003) and the National Key Basic Research Program of China (2007CB512403 and 2010CB529901). Conflict of interest: The Mitomycin C research buy authors Teicoplanin declare no financial or commercial conflict of interest. Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”. Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. “
“Traditional vaccine strategies are inefficient against challenge with complex pathogens including

HIV; therefore, novel vaccine technologies are required. DNA vaccines are attractive as they are relatively cheap and easy to manufacture, but a major limitation has been their lack of immunogenicity in humans, which may be overcome with the incorporation of an adjuvant. HSP70 is a recognised damage-associated molecular pattern, which is a potential adjuvant. We investigated the immunogenicity of a DNA vaccine encoding HIV gag and HSP70; the latter was genetically modified to produce cytoplasmic, secreted or membrane-bound HSP70, the expression of which was controlled by an independent promoter. The DNA was administered to C57BL/6 mice to evaluate gag-specific T-cell responses. Our results demonstrated the ability of membrane-bound and secreted HSP70 to significantly enhance gag-specific T-cell responses and increase the breadth of T-cell responses to include subdominant epitopes.