Laura Bald

Vaccination with the extracellular domain of p185neu prevents mammary tumor development in neu transgenic mice.

Abstract The HER2/neu oncogene product, p185HER2/neu, is overexpressed on the surface of many human breast cancers. Strains of transgenic mice have been developed that express the rat neu oncogene in mammary epithelial cells and develop spontaneous mammary tumors that overexpress p185neu. This model provides an ideal system for testing interventions to prevent tumor development. In this study, we immunized neu-transgenic mice with a vaccine consisting of the extracellular domain of p185neu (NeuECD). Immunized mice developed Neu-specific humoral immune responses, as measured by circulating anti-Neu antibodies in their sera, and cellular immune responses, as measured by lymphocyte proliferation to NeuECD in vitro. In addition, the subsequent development of mammary tumors was significantly lower in immunized mice than in controls and vaccine treatment was associated with a significant increase in median survival.

Monoclonal antibody based ELISAs for measurement of activins in biological fluids.

Two sensitive monoclonal antibody (MAb)-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), one for activin A (homodimer of beta A subunits) and one for activin B (homodimer of beta B subunits) in plasma have been developed. The activin A ELISA had an effective range of 0.2-50 ng/ml while the activin B ELISAs range was 0.1-25 ng/ml in human serum. Both ELISAs were specific with < 0.01% cross-reactivity with related hormones and follistatin (an activin binding protein), however the presence of recombinant human follistatin caused a decrease in measured level of activin A and B spiked human samples. The assay was linear across the standard curve range with intra- and interassay coefficients of variation were less than 15%. The level of activins in female serum range from 0.3 to 10.4 ng/ml. In summary, we have developed a reliable, convenient and rapid MAb-based enzyme immunoassay for determination of activin A and B levels in human serum which are also applicable for buffer, mouse and monkey serum matrices. This assay will be useful for studying the regulation and role of activin A and B in health and disease.