Taken together, our results suggest that vaccination against SP17 using orally administered microparticles could potentially be used as an effective consolidation strategy for OC patients with residual tumor or high probability for relapse following first-line treatments.
We isolated and expanded Sp17⁺ and Sp17<sup>-</sup> clones from the murine EOC cell line ID8, and compared their in-vitro cell growth characteristics and in-vivo tumorigenicity.
Because the function of the SP17 gene in ovarian cancer is not known, we examined the effect of small interfering RNA targeting the SP17 gene on the chemoresistance and proliferation of ES-2 ovarian cancer cells to paclitaxel, currently the most effective treatment for ovarian cancer.
Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I- restricted Sp17 specific CTLs were generated successfully from the peripheral blood of three patients with ovarian carcinoma at the time of disease presentation.