Christoph Huels

Merck KGaA · Innovation Center

Im beigefügten Abstraktband S.41, Vorträge V45, V46 und V47

Regulatory T-cells play a central role in the maintenance of the immunological balance and are powerful inhibitors of T-cell activation both in vivo and in vitro. The enhancement of suppressor-cell function might be a target for immunotherapeutic approaches for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases like multiple sclerosis and Crohn's disease.Th...

Regulatory T-cells play a central role in the maintenance of the immunological balance and are powerful inhibitors of T-cell activation both in vivo and in vitro. The enhancement of suppressor-cell function might be a target for immunotherapeutic approaches for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases like multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease.

With the genome sequences of several organisms now in public databases, the scientific community has realized that it is time to prepare for the next step: the understanding of biological systems or systems biology. Whereas genes contain the information for life, the encoded proteins and RNAs fulfill nearly all the functions, from replication to re...

At the end of September '96, the Club de Bruxelles held a conference ("The Future of Biotechnologies in Europe") to discuss the present development and the future of biotechnology in Europe. The meeting was intended to serve as a forum for the preparation of the 5th EU framework ("Inventing Tomorrow"), which is currently being set up under the lead...

The lower molecular weight analog 12 of sialyl LewisX was prepared and effected equal binding affinity to E- and P-selectin compared to the parent tetrasaccharide. If 12 was prepared using acidic ion exchange resins, false positive test were produced, especially binding to P-selectin seemed to be considerably enhanced. Traces of polyanions released...

Novel sialyl LewisX conjugates have been synthesized and evaluated as inhibitors of E- and P-selectin mediated cell adhesion in cell culture assays. The most potent conjugate in the static inhibition assays exhibited a significant and dose-dependent pharmacological potency as inhibitor of the edotoxin-induced leukocyte adhesion to the endothelium o...

Complex saccharide-peptide conjugates are accessible through an efficient fragment condensation in which the partially protected RGD peptide is coupled with the sialyl LewisX amine unit to form 1. Compound 1 is the most potent antagonist for P-select-in yet reported.

Activation of naive dense CD4(+) T cells by plate-bound anti-CDS antibodies favors the development of T(h)1 cells which, upon re-stimulation, produce significant amounts of IFN-gamma but no IL-4. However, co-activation of such naive T cells in the presence of IgE [anti-dinitrophenyl (DNP)]-loaded bone marrow-derived mast cells (BMMC) on plates coat...

The expression of interleukin 10 (IL-10) mRNA in human malignant melanoma was investigated by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction analysis. Selective expression of IL-10 mRNA in tissues of primary melanomas and melanoma metastases was found in comparison with normal skin. In addition, strong expression of IL-10 mRNA and of biologically...

Dense CD4+ T cells isolated from naive mice produce only trace amounts of IL-9 when stimulated by immobilized anti-CD3 in combination with anti-CD28 Abs. In this situation, IL-9 production is significantly stimulated by TGF-beta and further enhanced by the addition of IL-4, which, by itself, has only a minimal influence. IFN-gamma was found to inhi...

It was observed in vitro and in vivo that both interferon (IFN)-gamma and interleukin (IL)-12 can promote the development of T helper type 1 (TH1) cells. Since IL-12 was shown to be a costimulator for the production of IFN-gamma by T or natural killer (NK) cells, IL-12 might play only an indirect role in TH1 differentiation by providing IFN-gamma w...

Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is a novel cytokine that is produced by T cells, macrophages, B cells and keratinocytes. It has been shown to inhibit cytokine production and proliferation by T cells when macrophages are used as accessory or antigen presenting cells. Monokine production by macrophages is effectively downregulated by IL-10 and it can be used...

Expression of cytokines in tumor cells provides a sensitive modality to analyze the consequences of local cytokines in vivo on tumor infiltrating cells and tumorigenicity. We have transfected Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells with an interleukin 10 (IL-10) expression vector. CHO-IL10 cells although unaltered with respect to their in vitro growth lo...

IL-9 is produced in vitro by activated CD4+ T cell lines of the Th2 subtype and by naive CD4+ T cells. Here we show that T cell lines stimulated with Con A in the presence of accessory cells (AC) such as irradiated spleen cells or bone marrow-derived macrophages produced substantially more IL-9 than T cells stimulated with Con A alone. These data s...

The proliferation of mucosal mast cells (MMC) depends on the presence of interleukin 3 (IL 3) and can be further enhanced by interleukin 4 (IL 4). The supernatant of a TH2 cell clone (ST2/K.9) stimulated by concanavalin A was found to contain a factor, provisionally termed mast cell costimulatory activity (MCA), that substantially enhances the prol...