“
“Two international scientific societies dedicated

to research in neurotoxicology and neurobehavioral toxicology are the International Neurotoxicology Association (INA) and the International Congress on Occupational Health International Scientific Committee on Neurotoxicology and Psychophysiology (ICOH SCNP). From June 5-10, 2011 these two societies held a joint conference in Xi’an China entitled the Xi’an JPH203 clinical trial International Neurotoxicology Conference, Neurotoxicity and Neurodegeneration: Local Effect and Global Impact. At the conference two featured talks presented a brief history of the two societies. This article is a synthesis and expansion of those two presentations. The history of INA and ICOH SCNP is described in relation to the antecedent events leading to the formation of the two societies, their parallel developments, the nature of the societies and their scientific conferences, and a brief description of some of their accomplishments. Together, the historical development of these two societies is an important component of the development of the scientific discipline of neurotoxicology. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.”
“It is well established

that the Nef proteins of human and simian immunodeficiency viruses (HIV and SIV) modulate major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) cell surface expression to protect infected cells against lysis by cytotoxic HKI-272 datasheet T lymphocytes (CTLs). Recent data supported the observation that Nef also manipulates CTLs directly JSH-23 by down-modulating CD8 alpha beta (J. A. Leonard, T. Filzen, C. C. Carter, M. Schaefer, and K. L. Collins, J. Virol. 85: 6867-6881, 2011), but it remained unknown whether this Nef activity is conserved between different lineages of HIV and SIV. In this study, we examined

a total of 42 nef alleles from 16 different primate lentiviruses representing most major lineages of primate lentiviruses, as well as nonpandemic HIV-1 strains and the direct precursors of HIV-1 (SIVcpz and SIVgor). We found that the vast majority of these nef alleles strongly down-modulate CD8 beta in human T cells. Primate lentiviral Nefs generally interacted specifically with the cytoplasmic tail of CD8 beta, and down-modulation of this receptor was dependent on the conserved dileucine-based motif and two adjacent acidic residues (DD/E) in the C-terminal flexible loop of SIV Nef proteins. Both of these motifs are known to be important for the interaction of HIV-1 Nef with AP-2, and they were also shown to be critical for down-modulation of CD4 and CD28, but not MHC-I, by SIV Nefs. Our results show that down-modulation of CD4, CD8 beta, and CD28 involves largely overlapping (but not identical) domains and is most likely dependent on conserved interactions of primate lentiviral Nefs with cellular adaptor proteins.