The lipids of the common house cricket,Acheta domesticus L. I. Lipid classes and fatty acid distribution

The lipids of the common house cricket,Acheta domesticus L., have been examined with the following results. The fatty acids associated with the lipid extracts do not change significantly from the third through the eleventh week of the crickets’ postembryonic life. The major fatty acids are linoleic (30–40%), oleic (23–27%), palmitic (24–30%), and stearic acids (7–11%). There are smaller amounts of palmitoleic (3–4%), myristic (∼1%), and linolenic acids (<1%). The fatty acid composition of the cricket lipids reflects but is not identical to the fatty acids of the dietary lipids: linoleic (53%), oleic (24%), palmitic (15%), stearic (3%), myristic (2%), and linolenic acid (2%).The amount of triglycerides present in the crickets increases steadily from the second through the seventh or eighth week of postembryonic life, then drops sharply. Other lipid classes, such as hydrocarbons, simple esters, diglycerides, monoglycerides, sterols, and free fatty acids remain about constant. The composition of the fatty acids associated with the tri‐, di‐, and monoglycerides and the free fatty acid fraction are all about the same. The fatty acids associated with the simple esters are high in stearic acid.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142007/1/lipd0247.pd

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

The lipids of the common house cricket,Acheta domesticus L. II. Hydrocarbons

The hydrocarbons of the common house cricketAcheta domesticus L. consist ofn‐alkanes (4%), 2‐methylalkanes (20%), x‐methylalkanes (59%), an unidentified series of alkanes (trace), and olefins (16–185). The major n‐alkane isn‐nonacosane (3.5%). The major 2‐methylalkanes are 2‐methyloctacosane (8%) and 2‐methyltriacontane (11%). The members of the homologous x‐methylalkane series consist of mixtures of methylalkanes in which the methyl side‐chain is located on the 13th, 15th, and 17th carbon atom in the chain. The major x‐methylalkanes are the homologues containing 31 (3%), 33 (6.5%), 35 (12.5%), 37 (27%), and 39 (2.5%) carbon atoms. The olefins are a mixture of straight‐chain and 2‐methyl‐alkenes and alkadienes. The major olefins contain 31 (3%) and 37 (7.5%) carbon atoms.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141824/1/lipd0250.pd