Development Of A Vaccine Targeting Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
Abstract
The insulin-like growth factor (IGF) pathway plays an important role in breast cancer growth and metastasis. The IGF-I receptor (IGF-IR) is over-expressed in almost 50% of triple negative breast cancers (TNBC). Thus, therapeutically targeting tumor cells which have upregulated IGF-IR may be a promising approach to treat TNBC. IGF-IR is immunogenic in breast cancer and is a potential target for active immunization. We sought to develop a vaccine that will elicit Th1 immunity to IGF-IR. Ninety-five percent of the peptides predicted to bind with high affinity to MHCII induced a Th1 immune response in human PBMC. However, since IGF-IR is a self tumor antigen, Th epitopes could potentially elicit either an inflammatory Th1 (i.e. IFN-g) or immunosuppressive Th2 (i.e. IL-10) response. A ratio of magnitude and frequency of ELISPOT responses for IFN-g and IL-10 was calculated. The peptides that demonstrated a preference to secrete IFN-g over IL-10 were located primarily in the C-terminus of IGF-IR. Vaccination with those C-terminal peptides in a mouse model of TNBC demonstrated a robust Th1 response and concomitant inhibition of tumor growth. These data suggest that more effective peptide-based vaccines could be designed when both Th1 epitopes and immunosuppressive epitopes are screened simultaneously.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA556176
Entities
People
- Denise Cecil
Organizations
- Seattle University