Adoptive T cell transfer (ACT) of highly enriched tumor antigen-specific T cells has been shown to cause durable regression of metastatic cancer in some patients.
The results further demonstrate that activation of tumor antigen-specific CD8(+) CTLs contributes to local antitumor activity and suppression of DLN metastases.
Mac-2 binding protein (Mac-2BP) is a secreted tumor antigen that is elevated in many cancers and implicated in tumor metastasis, as well as cell adhesion and immune functions.
The steps in this validation process are i) to demonstrate that a tumor antigen is over-expressed at a reasonable frequency in primary tumors and in metastases; ii) to demonstrate the immunogenicity of a tumor antigen in an appropriate animal model; iii) to demonstrate its immunogenicity and safety in humans.
Identification of a mutated fibronectin as a tumor antigen recognized by CD4+ T cells: its role in extracellular matrix formation and tumor metastasis.
We revealed recently that Lck can be a tumor antigen recognized by HLA-A24-restricted and tumor-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) of cancer patients with metastases.
Using several different preexisting tumor models that make use of B16F10 melanoma cells expressing a target tumor antigen (human melanoma-associated gene [MAGE]-1), we found that vaccination with bone marrow-derived DCs engineered to express MAGE-1 via adenoviral-mediated gene transfer led to a dramatic decrease in the number of metastases in a lung metastasis model, and led to prolonged survival and some long-term cures in a subcutaneous preexisting tumor model.