In addition, residue MOG113–127 was found to be a B-cell epitope, suggesting that this may be a useful adjunct for the Selleckchem Panobinostat induction of EAE as well as for immunological studies

in C57BL/6 mice, which are increasingly being used to study immune function through the use of transgenic and gene knockout technology. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated, demyelinating and neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system (CNS).[1] These aspects of MS can be modelled using experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in animals.[2] EAE can be induced following immunization with a variety of myelin proteins,[2] notably with CNS-specific antigens such as proteolipid protein and myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG).[2, 3] Whereas proteolipid protein, an extremely hydrophobic protein, is the major myelin protein in CNS myelin, MOG is a minor CNS myelin protein present as a transmembrane protein expressed exclusively on the surface of oligodendrocytes and myelin. Despite comprising only 2·5% of the myelin proteins,[4] MOG is a powerful encephalitogen inducing EAE in a range of species including mice, rats and monkeys.[2-5] The full-length protein contains 218 amino acids that form a single extracellular region containing an immunoglobulin-like domain (residues 1–125), anchored

by a hydrophobic transmembrane domain (residues 126–146), an intracytoplasmic domain (residues 147–181), a second hydrophobic transmembrane domain (residues PLX4032 182–202) and another extracellular domain (residues 203–218). Many immunological studies in EAE and MS make use of recombinant proteins

representing the extracellular immunoglobulin-like domain of MOG, which is expressed on the surface of oligodendrocyte and myelin and is therefore readily available for recognition by autoreactive antibody responses.[2, 3, 6] However, the use of recombinant protein and peptides fails to address the possible pathogenic role of the full-length myelin-derived protein, expression of conformational epitopes, peptide targets within the transmembrane and intracytoplasmic Thalidomide domains as well as post-translational modifications.[7, 8] More recently, several of these aspects have been addressed with the use of myelin from wild-type (WT) and MOG-deficient (MOG−/−) mice.[9] Immunization with myelin from these animals demonstrates that immune responses to MOG in myelin can be crucial for chronic demyelinating EAE in mice and common marmosets.[4, 5] Having established that MOG-specific peptides can induce EAE in rodents,[3, 10] an important finding arising from the early studies on the encephalitogenic potential of MOG was the identification of an epitope of human MOG35–55 (hMOG35–55) that induced EAE in C57BL/6 mice.