Pre-Clinical and Clinical Aspects of Peptide-based Vaccine Against Human Solid Tumors

Seyed      Amir Jalali; Giorgio      Parmiani

Abstract

Peptides deriving from tumor-associated antigens and recognized by patient T cells have been firstly defined in the early 90's, and then used as vaccine in animal models and in cancer patients. Early trials showed a variable, often even high frequency of patients developing peptide-specific T-cell mediated immune response usually accompanied by a lower frequency of clinical response. Modified, long peptides could be synthesized with a higher in vitro binding to the corresponding HLA allele that only seldom translated into a clear improvement in the tumor response. However, we show here that more recent studies of multipeptide-based vaccines resulted in a higher and more robust T cell response causing also a more effective clinical response particularly in melanoma and prostate cancer patients. In this article, we also used some of the recent patents describing different inventions related to pre-clinical and clinical aspects of peptide based vaccines against human solid tumors.

Keywords: Peptides, tumor antigens, vaccination, clinical response, tumor-associated antigens (TAAs), melanoma antigen (MAGE), HLA haplotype, CTL epitope, HLA receptors, high-throughput receptorligand assays, mass spectrometry, cancer-testis (CT), HLA-A2, peptide-based anti-cancer vaccines, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs)