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International audience; Background: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is a major cause of morbidity following hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. EBV-infected B cells may not respond to rituximab treatment and may lead to a life-threatening post-transplantation lymphoproliferative disorder. Adoptive cellular immunotherapy using EBV-lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCL) as stimulating antigen has proved effective in restoring specific immunity. However, EBV presents several immunodominant antigens, and developing a swift and effective clinical-grade immunotherapy relies on the definition of a Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) universal stimulating antigen.Methods: Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from six donors with a cellular immune response against EBV were immunoselected after stimulation with a new EBV antigen associated with an EBNA3 peptide pool.Results: After immunoselection, a mean of 0.53 ± 0.25 × 106 cells was recovered consisting of a mean of 24.77 ± 18.01% CD4+-secreting interferon (IFN)-γ and 51.42 ± 26.92% CD8+-secreting IFN-γ. The T memory stem cell sub-population was identified. EBV-specific T cells were expanded in vitro, and their ability to secrete IFN-γ and to proliferate after re-stimulation with EBV antigen was confirmed. A specific lysis was observed against autologous target cells pulsed with EBV peptide pools (57.6 ± 11.5%) and against autologous EBV-LCL (18.3 ± 7.3%). A mean decrease of 94.7 ± 3.3% in alloreactivity against third-party donor mononuclear cells with EBV-specific T cells was observed compared with PBMCs before selection.Conclusions: Our results show that a combination of peptide pools including EBNA3 is needed to generate EBV-specific T cells with good specific cytotoxicity and devoid of alloreactivity, but as yet GMP grade is not fully achieved.

International audience; OBJECTIVE:To assess the prevalence of systemic sclerosis (SSc) in the Lorraine region, France.METHODS:Data from three sources - general practitioners and community and hospital specialists, medical records departments, and regional and national laboratories-and a capture-recapture method with log-linear models were used to estimate SSc prevalence in the region. Double recording was checked, and reported cases were validated after a review of medical records.RESULTS:We identified 560 records of suspected SSc cases corresponding to 327 unique suspected SSc cases existing on June 30, 2006, in Lorraine. On the basis of the 193 validated cases (22 [11.4%] with diffuse disease, 136 [70.5%] with limited disease, 31 [16.1%] with limited involvement and 4 unknown), the observed overall crude prevalence of SSc was 105.4 cases per million adult inhabitants (95% confidence interval [CI]: 91.0; 121.4). With the capture-recapture method, the estimated number of SSc cases was 233 (95% CI: 217.3; 260.0), so an estimated 40 cases were not identified by the three sources. The estimated overall prevalence was 132.2 cases per million adult inhabitants (95% CI: 115.8; 154.0).CONCLUSIONS:Our study provides the first estimate of SSc prevalence in the Lorraine region. The capture-recapture method allowed us to estimate an additional 21% of unobserved cases and is a good alternative to the community-based study design for estimating the prevalence of rare diseases.