Prostate Cancer Immunotherapy Development in Prostate Specific Antigen Transgenic Mice
Abstract
In Western society, prostate cancer represents the most common non-cutaneous cancer in men and is the second leading cancer related cause of death. The widespread occurrence of the cancer enables it to account for almost forty thousand deaths a year in the U.S. despite the fact that the majority of individuals who contract the disease die of other causes. Early disease can be cured via surgical resection or three dimensional external beam radiation but is frequently avoided since the slow growth of the tumor generally allows the person to die of their other comorbidities without the side effects of the definitive treatments. Unfortunately, if metastatic disease occurs, therapeutic regimens are only capable of delaying the tumor's growth or providing palliation and the person will probably succumb to prostate cancer. Our work attempted to develop an anti- prostate cancer vaccine that specifically induces an immune response against a protein expressed by prostate cancer cells, prostate specific antigen (PSA). We focused on demonstrating the ability of a vaccine to induce an anti-tumor response targeting PSA in a setting where PSA is considered a self antigen and forces of tolerance could confound the vaccine's efficacy. Given the ultimate goal of applying this vaccine to the clinical situation, experiments were also performed to develop a vaccine for human application using components restricted to one haplotype of the human class I MHC system, HLA- A*O2Ol (A2). The previous annual reports detailed our success in both targeting the self- antigen PSA in PSA transgenic mice and identifying and using A2 restricted epitopes of the PSA protein in vaccines that protected transgenic mice containing a quasi-human immune system from PSA expressing tumor cells. These results allow us to continue to develop the vaccine to target PSA that may ultimately lead to phase I clinical trials for use in patients suffering from prostate cancer. Additionally, successful establishment 7
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA406768
Entities
People
- W. M. Kast
Organizations
- Loyola University New Orleans