A Cancer Therapeutic Vaccine based on Clustered Tn‐Antigen Mimetics Induces Strong Antibody‐Mediated Protective Immunity

Tumor‐associated carbohydrate antigens (TACAs) are key components of cancer vaccines. A variety of vaccines based on native TACAs such as α‐Tn have shown immunogenicity and protection in preclinical animal studies, however, their weak immunogenicity, low in vivo instability, and poor bioavailability, have discouraged their further evaluations in clinical studies. A new improved vaccine prototype is reported. It is composed of four clustered Tn‐antigen mimetics and a immunogenic peptide epitope that are conjugated to a cyclopeptide carrier. The immunization of mice with this vaccine 1) was safe, 2) induced a strong and long‐lasting Tn‐specific response with IgM/IgG antibodies able to recognize native carbohydrate antigens; 3) produced high titers of IgG1, IgG2a, and IgG3 antibodies; and 4) produced a significant antibody‐dependent regression of tumors and conferred protection. Altogether, these findings pave the way for the clinical development of safe and effective therapeutic vaccines against Tn‐expressing cancers.     

Modeling of gain and phase dynamics in quantum dot amplifiers

By means of an electron hole rate equation model we explain the phase dynamics of a quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifier and the appearance of different decay times observed in pump and probe experiments. The ultrafast hole relaxation leads to a first ultrafast recovery of the gain, followed by electron relaxation and, in the nanosecond timescale, radiative and non-radiative recombinations. The phase dynamics is slower and is affected by thermal redistribution of carriers within the dot. We explain the ultrafast response of quantum dot amplifiers as an effect of hole escape and recombination without the need to assume Auger processes.     

Design and synthesis of enantiopure 1-[1(S)-(2-pyridyl)alkyl]-2(R)-isopropylaziridines, new ligands for asymmetric catalysis

Enantiopure 1-(2-pyridyl)alkyl aziridines were designed as bidentate ligands for asymmetric catalysis. Their synthesis involved the addition of organometallic reagents to the imine prepared from 2-pyridinealdehyde and an enantiopure β-aminoalcohol, followed by cyclisation of the β-aminoalcohol moiety to the aziridine ring. Two such ligands (N–N)* were prepared from (S)-valinol and converted to the complexes (η³-allyl)(N–N)*Pd⁺SbF₆⁻, one of which was characterised by X-ray crystallography. Modest enantioselectivities were achieved in a representative Pd-catalysed allylic substitution reaction.     

On the initial-value problem in a cold plasma model

We study existence of solutions to elliptic systems with measure on the right hand side.     

The BFKL-Regge factorization and F2b , F2c , FL at HERA: physics implications of nodal properties of the BFKL eigenfunctions

The asymptotic freedom is known to split the leading-log BFKL pomeron into a series of isolated poles in the complex angular momentum plane. One of our earlier findings was that the subleading hard BFKL exchanges decouple from such experimentally important observables as small-x charm F ₂ ^c , beauty F ₂ ^b and the longitudinal structure functions of the proton at moderately large Q ². For instance, we predicted precocious BFKL asymptotics of F ₂ ^c (x, Q ²) with intercept of the rightmost BFKL pole a _IP(0) − 1 = Δ_IP ≈ 0.4. On the other hand, the small-x open beauty photo- and electro-production probes the vacuum exchange for much smaller color dipoles which entails significant subleading vacuum pole corrections to the small-x behavior. In view of the accumulation of the experimental data on small-x F ₂ ^c and F ₂ ^b we extend our 1999 predictions to the kinematical domain covered by new HERA measurements. Our parameter-free results agree well with the determination of F ₂ ^c , F _L and published H1 results F ₂ ^b on but slightly overshoot the very recent (2008, preliminary) H1 results on F ₂ ^b .     

Precise measurement of Γ(K→e ν(γ))/Γ(K→μ ν(γ)) and study of K→e ν γ

We present a precise measurement of the ratio R _K =Γ(K→e ν(γ))/Γ(K→μ ν(γ)) and a study of the radiative process K→e ν γ, performed with the KLOE detector. The results are based on data collected at the Frascati e ⁺ e ^? collider DAΦNE for an integrated luminosity of 2.2 fb^?1. We find R _K =(2.493±0.025_stat±0.019_syst)×10^?5, in agreement with the Standard Model expectation. This result is used to improve constraints on parameters of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with lepton flavor violation. We also measured the differential decay rate dΓ(K→e ν γ)/dE _γ for photon energies 10<E _γ < 250 MeV. Results are compared with predictions from theory.     

Homomorphic signatures with sublinear public keys via asymmetric programmable hash functions

We introduce the notion of asymmetric programmable hash functions (APHFs, for short), which adapts Programmable hash functions, introduced by Hofheinz and Kiltz (Crypto 2008, Springer, 2008), with two main differences. First, an APHF works over bilinear groups, and it is asymmetric in the sense that, while only secretly computable, it admits an isomorphic copy which is publicly computable. Second, in addition to the usual programmability, APHFs may have an alternative property that we call programmable pseudorandomness. In a nutshell, this property states that it is possible to embed a pseudorandom value as part of the function’s output, akin to a random oracle. In spite of the apparent limitation of being only secretly computable, APHFs turn out to be surprisingly powerful objects. We show that they can be used to generically implement both regular and linearly-homomorphic signature schemes in a simple and elegant way. More importantly, when instantiating these generic constructions with our concrete realizations of APHFs, we obtain: (1) the first linearly-homomorphic signature (in the standard model) whose public key is sub-linear in both the dataset size and the dimension of the signed vectors; (2) short signatures (in the standard model) whose public key is shorter than those by Hofheinz–Jager–Kiltz (Asiacrypt 2011, Springer, 2011) and essentially the same as those by Yamada et al. (CT-RSA 2012, Springer, 2012).