Oberson, Anne Spagnuolo, Lorenzo Puddinu, Viola Barchet, Winfried Rittner, Karola Bourquin, Carole 2018-01-19 Novel adjuvants are needed to increase the efficacy of vaccine formulations and immune therapies for cancer and chronic infections. In particular, adjuvants that promote a strong type I IFN response are required, since this cytokine is crucial for the development of efficient anti-tumoral and anti-viral immunity. Nucleic acid band 2 (NAB2) is a double- stranded RNA molecule isolated from yeast and identified as an agonist of the pattern- recognition receptors TLR3 and MDA-5. We compared the ability of NAB2 to activate innate immunity with that of poly(I:C), a well-characterized TLR3 and MDA-5 agonist known for the induction of type I IFN. NAB2 promoted stronger IFN-α production and induced a higher activation state of both murine and human innate immune cells compared to poly(I:C). This correlated with a stronger activation of the signalling pathway downstream of MDA-5, and IFN-α induction was dependent on MDA-5. Upon injection, NAB2 induced higher levels of serum IFN-α in mice than poly(I:C). These results suggest that NAB2 has the potential to become an efficient adjuvant for the induction of type-I IFN responses in therapeutic immunization against cancer or infections. application/pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/306653 https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/306653/files/bou_nna.pdf eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.18632/oncotarget.23725 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess License undefined Oncotarget. - 2018, vol. 9, no. 5, p. 5641-5651 info:eu-repo/classification/udc/57 NAB2 is a novel immune stimulator of MDA-5 that promotes a strong type I interferon response http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501