Vaccine Development Against Novel Breast Cancer Antigens
Abstract
Improvement in the treatments of breast cancer are required - at present, the foundations for therapy is still surgery, radiotherapy and cytotoxic drugs and added to this is hormonal manipulation and more recently the Herceptin antibody. However, the treatment is less than optimal with serious side effects occurring with chemotherapy and while the "cure" rate is steadily improving, it is appropriate to examine immunotherapy to give a major improvement and survival of patients with breast cancer. For immunotherapy to succeed two components are required a) antigens and b) delivery system. In this study, we identified a number of antigens which, at least initially, appeared to be over-expressed in breast cancer and which could be suitable targets - these included MUCI, Cripto, nm23, several oncogenes, ampheregulin, E(iF receptor and Her2/neu. This was an ambitious project and along the way several of these were discarded as not being sufficiently cancer specific to use and also the failure to be able to produce adequate amounts for study hindered some of the proposed antigens to be discontinued. Delivery systems today mostly rely on antigen encountering dendritic cells by chance and other adjuvants have been described which non-specifically heighten the immune response all of which have side effects. Furthermore, the treatment with advanced disease, seeking an enhanced immune response, is almost doomed to fail because of the poor health (immune status) of the patients. With this mind, we not only examined the role of mannan to target the mannose receptor of dendritic cells, but variations of this using ex vivo cells (outside the patient to avoid cross reactivity and the suppressive environment in the patient). We compared the mannan technology with other modes of immunization such as the prime boost technology, the use of antennapedia peptides for delivery and the use of the beads as carriers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA409560
Entities
People
- Ian Mckenzie
- Vasso Apostolopoulos