This article is part of the supplement: Italian Society of Bioinformatics (BITS): Annual Meeting 2007 .

Research

Gene expression profile of peripheral blood mononuclear cells in response to HIV-VLPs stimulation

Luigi Buonaguro¹ , Alessandro Monaco² , Eleonora Aricò³ , Ena Wang² , Maria Lina Tornesello¹ , George K Lewis⁴ , Franco M Marincola² and Franco M Buonaguro¹

¹  Lab. Viral Oncogenesis and Immunotherapies & AIDS Reference Center, Department of Experimental Oncology, Istituto Nazionale Tumori “Fond. G. Pascale”, 80131 Napoli, Italy

²  Immunogenetics Section, Department of Transfusion Medicine, Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-1502, USA

³  Department of Cell Biolology and Neurosciences, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy

⁴  Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, University of Marlyand, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA

author email corresponding author email

BMC Bioinformatics 2008, 9(Suppl 2):S5doi:10.1186/1471-2105-9-S2-S5

Published:	26 March 2008

Abstract

Background

Baculovirus-expressed HIV-1 Pr55gag Virus-Like Particles (HIV-VLPs) induce maturation and activation of monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MDDCs) with a production of Th1- and Th2-specific cytokines.

Results

The analysis of genomic transcriptional profile of MDDCs, obtained from normal healthy donors and activated by HIV-VLPs, show the modulation of genes involved in the morphological and functional changes characterizing the MDDCs activation and maturation. Similar data are obtained using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), without further selection, showing the feasibility of a direct and “simplified” experimental procedure.

Conclusions

The results here described show that the maturation pattern induced by HIV-VLPs in ex vivo generated MDDCs, can be observed also in CD14-expressing freshly derived PBMCs, with the possible identification of genetic predictors of individual response to immunogens.