• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.813-819
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• 2019

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) induces severe respiratory impairment with a reported mortality rate of ~36% in humans. The absence of clinically available MERS-CoV vaccines and treatments to date has resulted in uncontrolled incidence and propagation of the virus. In vaccine design, fusion with the IgG Fc domain is reported to increase the immunogenicity of various vaccine antigens. However, limited reports have documented the potential negative effects of Fc fusion on vaccine antigens. To determine whether Fc fusion affects the immunogenicity of MERS-CoV antigen, we constructed a Fcassociated MERS-CoV spike protein (eS770-Fc, 110 kDa), whereby human IgG4 Fc domain was fused to MERS-CoV spike protein (eS770) via a Gly/Pro linker using baculovirus as the expression system. For comparative analyses, two eS770 proteins lacking the IgG4 Fc domain were generated using the IdeS protease ($eS770-{\Delta}Fc$) or His tag attachment (eS770-His) and the immunogenicity of the above constructs were examined following intramuscular immunization in mice. Contrary to expectations, non-Fc spike proteins ($eS770-{\Delta}Fc$, eS770-His; 90 kDa) showed higher immunogenicity than the Fc fusion protein (eS770-Fc). Moreover, unlike non-Fc spike proteins, eS770-Fc immunization did not elicit neutralizing antibodies against MERS-CoV. The lower immunogenicity of Fc-fused eS770 was related to alterations in the structural conformation of the spike protein. Taken together, our results indicate that IgG Fc fusion reduces the immunogenicity of eS770 by interfering with the proper folding structure.

• BMB Reports
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• v.56 no.7
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• pp.392-397
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• 2023

In this study, recombinant Fc-fused Prostate acid phosphatase (PAP) proteins were produced in transgenic plants. PAP was fused to immunoglobulin (Ig) A and M Fc domain (PAP-IgA Fc and PAP-IgM Fc), which were tagged to the ER retention sequence KDEL to generate PAP-IgA FcK and PAP-IgM FcK. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation was performed to produce transgenic tobacco plants expressing four recombinant proteins. Genomic PCR and RT-PCR analyses confirmed the transgene insertion and mRNA transcription of PAP-IgA Fc, PAP-IgM Fc, PAP-IgA FcK, and PAP-IgM FcK in tobacco plant leaves. Western blot confirmed the expression of PAP-IgA Fc, PAP-IgM Fc, PAP-IgA FcK, and PAP-IgM FcK proteins. SEC-HPLC and Bio-TEM analyses were performed to confirm the size and shape of the plant-derived recombinant PAP-Fc fusion proteins. In mice experiments, the plant-derived IgA and IgM Fc fused proteins induced production of total IgGs including IgG1 against PAP. This result suggests that IgA and IgM Fc fusion can be applied to produce recombinant PAP proteins as a prostate cancer vaccine in plant expression system.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.375-381
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• 2014

Transgenic potato was generated to express recombinant 5 repeated ${\beta}$-amyloid ($A{\beta}$) peptides, potential antigens to be applied as a preventive accine for Alzheimer's disease using Agrobacterium mediated transformation. The $A{\beta}$ peptides were fused to the human IgG Fc fragment enhancing protein and KDEL, which is the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) retention signal ($5A{\beta}$-FcK). The $5A{\beta}$-FcK, was expressed under the control of the duplicated 35S promoter. PCR analysis confirmed the presence of the transgene in several transgenic potato lines. Southern blot analysis showed only a single gene copy number in transgenic line 22, whereas multiple gene copy numbers were shown for transgenic lines 31 and 44. Northern blot analysis showed that line 22 had stronger mRNA levels when compared to lines 31 and 44. Immunoblot analysis confirmed that the $5A{\beta}$-FcK protein was expressed in the transgenic potato plant. These results indicate that $5A{\beta}$ fused to Fc can be expressed in potato plants.

• BMB Reports
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.146-149
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• 2010

Exendin-4 (Ex-4), a peptide secreted from the salivary glands of the Gila monster lizard, can increase pancreatic $\beta$-cell growth and insulin secretion by activating glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor. In this study, we expressed a fusion protein consisting of exendin-4 and the human immunoglobulin heavy chain (Ex-4/IgG-Fc) in E. coli and explored its potential therapeutic use for the treatment of insulin-resistant type 2 diabetes. Here, we show that the Ex-4/IgG-Fc fusion protein induces expression of insulin receptor substrate-2 in rat insulinoma INS-1 cells. Our findings therefore suggest that Ex-4/IgG-Fc overexpressed in E. coli could be used as a potential, long-acting glucagon-like peptide-1 mimetic.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.546-552
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• 2022

Epidermal cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is a tumor-associated antigen (TAA), which has been considered as a cancer vaccine candidate. The EpCAM protein fused to the fragment crystallizable region of immunoglobulin G (IgG) tagged with KDEL endoplasmic reticulum (ER) retention signal (EpCAM-FcK) has been successfully expressed in transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum cv. Xanthi) and purified from the plant leaf. In this study, we investigated the ability of the plant-derived EpCAM-FcK (EpCAM-FcK^P) to elicit an immune response in vivo. The animal group injected with the EpCAM-FcK^P showed a higher differentiated germinal center (GC) B cell population (~9%) compared with the animal group injected with the recombinant rhEpCAM-Fc chimera (EpCAM-Fc^M). The animal group injected with EpCAM-FcK^P (~42%) had more differentiated T follicular helper cells (Tfh) than the animal group injected with EpCAM-Fc^M (~7%). This study demonstrated that the plant-derived EpCAM-FcK fusion antigenic protein induced a humoral immune response in mice.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.35 no.9A
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• pp.859-867
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• 2010

In this paper, we consider a novel spectrum sensing system in which firstly, the fusion center (FC) senses and makes the own decision then if its sensing result is not useful for achieving the final decision, the local observations from the cognitive users (CUs) will be required. Moreover, in case that FC needs the results from CUs, we will choose only CU having the highest collected energy to send its local decision to FC. Based on this selecting method, the number of sensing bits can be reduced; hence, we can save the power and the bandwidth for reporting stage in the cognitive radio network (CRN). The mathematical analysis of the key metrics of the sensing schemes (probability of detection, false alarm, e.g.) will be investigated and confirmed by the Monte-Carlo simulation results to show the performance enhancement of the proposed schemes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Applied Pharmacology
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• 1994.11a
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• pp.143-145
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• 1994

Chimeric fusion proteins involving IgG have proven valuable in studying protein-protein interactions and may possess therapeutic applications as well. For example, three receptor subtypes for the natriuretic peptides, when fused to the Fc portion of human IgG ${\gamma}$ chain, were quantitatively and qualitatively indistinguishable from the native receptor, thus allowing detailed structure-function studies of the receptor. In an attempt to block human immunodeficiency virus infectivity with soluble derivatives of CD4, a CD4/IgG Fc chimeric molecule was shown to increase the plasma half life of soluble CD4 and possessed the added advantage of IgG Fc-mediated placental transfer. In the case of the KGFR, this approach provided a framework for dissection of its ligand binding domains and made it possible to demonstrate that high affinity binding sites for two ligands, aFGF and KGF, reside within different receptor Ig-like domains. Chimeric molecules fused to immunoglobulins would have the advantages of secretion from transfected cells as well as detection and purification from medium utilizing Staphylococcus aureus Protein A. In addition, where highly related receptors make their discrimination very hard due to the difficulties in generating specific immunochemical probes, IgG fusion protein with tailor-made specificities confers particular advantages to elucidate patterns of receptor distribution and expression. The approach described here may have general applications in defining ligand-receptor interactions as well as searching for specific agonists and antagonists of receptor function.

• BMB Reports
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.212-216
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• 2009

The short in vivo half-life of GLP-1 prevents it from being used clinically. This short half-life occurs because GLP-1 is rapidly degraded by dipeptidyl peptidases such as DPP-IV. To overcome this obstacle, a GLP-1/Fc was constructed and evaluated to determine if it was degraded by DPP-IV and in serum. When the degradation of GLP-1/Fc by human DPP-IV and rabbit serum was compared with that of GLP-1 it was found to be reduced by approximately 5- and 4-fold, respectively. Furthermore, GLP-1/Fc showed a potent activity for human GLP-1 receptor activation ($EC_{50}$ approximately 6 nM). Taken together, these results indicate that GLP-1/Fc may have an extended half-life in vivo that occurs as a result of inhibition of degradation by human DPP-IV. Due to the extended half life, GLP-1/Fc may be useful for clinical treatments.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.58-73
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• 2014

As is well known, cooperative sensing can significantly improve the sensing accuracy as compared to local sensing in cognitive radio networks (CRNs). However, a large number of cooperative secondary users (SUs) reporting their local detection results to the fusion center (FC) would cause much overhead, such as sensing delay and energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a fast cooperative sensing scheme, called double threshold fusion (DTF), to reduce the sensing overhead while satisfying a given sensing accuracy requirement. In DTF, FC respectively compares the number of successfully received local decisions and that of failed receptions with two different thresholds to make a final decision in each reporting sub-slot during a sensing process, where cooperative SUs sequentially report their local decisions in a selective fashion to reduce the reporting overhead. By jointly considering sequential detection and selective reporting techniques in DTF, the overhead of cooperative sensing can be significantly reduced. Besides, we study the performance optimization problems with different objectives for DTF and develop three optimum fusion rules accordingly. Simulation results reveal that DTF shows evident performance gains over an existing scheme.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.136-148
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• 2020

A bispecific antibody (BsAb) is an artificial protein containing two kinds of specific antigen binding sites. BsAb can connect target cells to functional cells or molecules, and thus stimulate a directed immune response. Last several decades a wide variety of bsAb formats and production technologies have been developed. BsAbs are constructed either chemically or biologically, exploiting techniques like cell fusion and recombinant DNA technologies. There are over 100 different formats of bsAb so far developed, but they could be classified into the two main categories such as Fc-based (with a Fc region) bsAbs and fragment-based (without a Fc region) bsAbs. BsAb has a broad application prospect in tumor immunotherapy and drug delivery. Here, we present a brief introduction to the structure of antibody, pharmacological mechanisms of antibodies and the trend in the production technologies of therapeutic antibodies. In addition, we address a review on the current status of various bsAb format development and their production technologies together with global situation in the clinical studies of bsAb.