Pharmaceutical compositions comprising herpes virus entry receptor protein

Abstract

The present invention provides isolated and purified polynucleotides that encode HVEM of mammalian origin, expression vectors containing those polynucleotides, host cells transformed with those expression vectors, a process of making HVEM using those polynucleotides and vectors, and isolated and purified HVEM.

What is claimed is:  
     
         1 . A pharmaceutical composition comprising a recombinant human HVEM polypeptide, wherein said polypeptide is encoded by a cDNA contained within the plasmid pBEC580, designated as ATCC No. 97236, and a physiologically acceptable diluent.  
     
     
         2 . The pharmaceutical composition of  claim 1 , wherein said HVEM polypeptide comprises amino acids 1-185 of human HVEM.  
     
     
         3 . The pharmaceutical composition of  claim 1 , wherein said HVEM polypeptide is soluble.  
     
     
         4 . The pharmaceutical composition of  claim 3 , wherein said soluble HVEM polypeptide does not comprise a rabbit immunoglobulin heavy chain amino acid sequence.  
     
     
         5 . The pharmaceutical composition of  claim 1 , wherein said cDNA is the sequence of SEQ ID NO:1 from nucleotide position 294 to nucleotide position 1142.