Cancer vaccine delivers antigen to dendritic cells.

2004 FEB 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Researchers have developed an adenoviral vector cancer vaccine that delivers a tumor-associated antigen/CD40-ligand fusion protein to dendritic cells.

"To develop a method to overcome the anergy that exists in tumor hosts to cancer, we have designed an adenoviral vector for the in vivo activation and tumor antigen loading of dendritic cells. This adenoviral vector encodes a fusion protein composed of an amino-terminal tumor-associated antigen fragment fused to the CD40 ligand (CD40L)," scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA report.

"Subcutaneous injection of an adenoviral vector encoding a fusion protein of the human papillomavirus E7 foreign antigen linked to the CD40L generates CD8+ T cell-dependent immunoresistance to the growth of the P-positive syngeneic TC-1 cancer cells in C57BL/6 mice for up to one year," said Lixin Zhang and colleagues at Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in the United States. "We also studied the s.c. injection of a vector carrying the gene for the human MUC-1 (hMUC-1) self-antigen fused to the CD40L. When this vector was injected into hMUC-1.Tg mice, which are transgenic for the hMUC-1 antigen, the growth of syngeneic hMUC1-positive LL1/LL2hMUC-1 mouse cancer cells was suppressed in 100% of the injected animals."

"The hMUC-1.Tg mice are anergic to the hMUC-1 antigen before the injection of the vector," reported the investigators. "These experimental ...