Prostate Cancer Immunotherapy Development in Prostate Specific Antigen Transgenic Mice
Abstract
Our research is focused towards the development of an immunotherapy for prostate cancer that specifically targets the expressed prostate specific antigen (PSA) of prostate tumor cells. With over forty thousand deaths a year and the near lack of curative treatments, an effective therapy would greatly benefit society. Our research to date has suggested that PSA can serve as a tumor rejection marker in our PSA transgenic mice whose prostates express human PSA. Vaccination with a tumor cell that expresses PSA elicited a specific anti-PSA response that prevented the outgrowth of a tumor challenge of PSA expressing cells. After indicating the pertinence of PSA as a target of an immunotherapy, we attempted to identify PSA derived peptides that are immunogenic in the HLA-A*020l haplotype. Of nine PSA peptides selected for our study based on binding studies, two have proven to be immunogenic in the HLA- A*02O1/Dd transgenic mouse model after vaccination of peptide pulsed dendritic cells. These results indicate that not only can we use PSA as a plausible rejection marker but we can also elicit a CTL response directed against the human PSA peptides in a HLA-A*020l/Dd transgenic mouse. These results allow us to experiment with our vaccination strategies for the development of an efficacious anti-prostate cancer immunotherapy.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA380895
Entities
People
- W. M. Kast
Organizations
- Loyola University Chicago