Transfection of tumor antigens generates cytotoxic T lymphocytes.

2004 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Transfection of RNA encoding tumor antigens following maturation of dendritic cells leads to prolonged presentation of antigen and the generation of high-affinity tumor-reactive cytotoxic T lymphocytes.

According to recent research from the United States, "Common tumor vaccination strategies utilizing peptide-pulsed dendritic cells (DC) are limited to targeting antigens with known epitopes in patients expressing a defined restricting allele and can result in the preferential induction of low-avidity T cells that fail to recognize tumor cells. The use of dendritic cells transfected with RNA encoding tumor antigen offers the prospect of antigen-specific immunization without requiring prior knowledge of the immunogenic epitope or restricting allele, since epitopes from the translated protein are processed by the endogenous antigen-presentation machinery."

"However, its use in vaccine studies has been limited by low RNA transfection efficiency and the use of immature DC as recipient cells," said Xinsheng Liao and collaborators at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Duke University. "In this study, we report an RNA transfection strategy that routinely achieves expression in 40-50% of mature DC, which are better stimulator cells. Such RNA-transfected mature DC exhibited a prolonged duration of presentation of immunogenic epitopes compared ...