Optimal active immunotherapy of cancer should involve selectively potentiating the immune response tocancer specific antigens while reducing reactivity to self-antigens. Vaccine approaches are most likely to beeffective in the setting of minimal cancer burden such as would occur after stem cell transplant (SCT).Therefore, the long-term goals of this project are to improve the effectiveness of SCT of hematopoieticneoplasms by safely increasing the immune response specifically directed at residual cancer cells usingpeptide vaccination. Much of the proposal focuses on WT1, a validated, commonly expressed tumorantigen. We also explore as a target the newly described mutated JAK2 kinase, responsible for manymyeloproliferative disorders/These goals are reasonable because: 1) new understanding of the role ofamino acid anchor motifs for MHC molecules in our target peptides and the strategic use of synthetic,heteroclitic, analog T cell epitopes. 2) the characterization of several peptide based vaccines for patients,including those to bcr/abl, WT-1, PR-1, and other oncogene associated targets as new cancer and leukemiaassociated tumor antigens. 3) the observation of clinical responses with the use of these peptide vaccines inpatients with residual leukemia. Therefore, in this grant proposal we plan to extend our own work from theprior grant period and build on the published work of others into a better understanding of, and developmentof, specific immunotherapies directed to the oncogene products WT-1 and, for the first time, mutated JAK2kinase. Previuosly, we focused on bcr/abl as a prototype target for vaccine therapy of CML and haveprogressed to multicenter trials. We build on this success here in new models directed at vaccinedevelopment against other important oncogene products.
Aims 1 and 2 focus on WT1, a validated vaccinetarget found in many tumors and leukemias.
Aim 1 is centered on discovery and characterization of novelWT-1 antigens.
Aim 2 A seeks to translate this knowledge in animals, in models of SCT and GVHD, and Aim2B examines these antigens in humans.
Aim 3 looks at the newly discovered, mutated JAK2 kinase,responsible for many myeloproliferative disorders, as a potential malignancy-specific target. There areimportant synergies between this project and project #4 of Richard O'Reilly in the development of the WT1vaccine strategies. Relevance: Vaccines inducing or augmenting leukemia-selective T cell responses mayreduce risk of relapse post transplant.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 452 publications
