Obesity and Air Pollution: Global Risk Factors for Pediatric Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Implication for health policy/practice/research/medical education:It is well recognized that an HCV vaccine can dramatically enhance the public health. Spontaneous resolution of HCV infection in human and chimpanzee models provides a strong rationale basis for the development of preventive/therapeutic vaccines for HCV. Several HCV vaccine trials have revealed the constraints of induction of a robust adaptive immune response following vaccination. The current study was designed to enhance immune responses towards HCV core DNA vaccine using CCL19 chemokine-expressing plasmid as an immuno-adjuvant in a mice model. Such preliminary data might be of relevance for future applications in human HCV vaccine clinical trials.

Authors’ Contribution:Christine Hartoonian: Study concept and design, developing the original idea and the protocol, performing experiments, data analyzing, and manuscript preparation. Lida Langroudi Technical support in large scale DNA preparation and immunoassays, Parisa Amir Kalvanagh Development of protocols, manuscript preparation, Yonh-Suk Jang: Providing the CCL19 cDNA, development of protocols for CCL19 molecular cloning and expression analysis, Massoumeh Ebtekar: Study concept and design, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, Mojtaba Tabatabaei Yazdi: Study concept and design, Ali Karami: Study concept and design, Babak Negahdari: technical support in immunoassays, Zargham Sepehrizadeh: Study concept and design, development of the original idea and the protocols, data analyzing of in-vitro experiments, manuscript preparation. Kayhan Azadmanesh: Study concept and design, development of the original idea and the protocols, data analyzing, and critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content.

Financial Disclosure:The authors declared no competing financial interests.

Funding/Support:This project was conducted as a part of fulfillment of PhD degree requirements of Department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Biotechnology Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Financial support was provided by the above mentioned medical school and partly supported by grants from Pasteur Institute of Iran.