Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Contact, publication, and social network information about Harvard faculty and fellows.

Superantigens

"Superantigens" is a descriptor in the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Descriptors are arranged in a hierarchical structure, which enables searching at various levels of specificity.

Microbial antigens that have in common an extremely potent activating effect on T-cells that bear a specific variable region. Superantigens cross-link the variable region with class II MHC proteins regardless of the peptide binding in the T-cell receptor's pocket. The result is a transient expansion and subsequent death and anergy of the T-cells with the appropriate variable regions.


This graph shows the total number of publications written about "Superantigens" by people in Harvard Catalyst Profiles by year, and whether "Superantigens" was a major or minor topic of these publication.
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Funded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through its Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program, grant number UL1TR002541.