The proposed research is directed at developing vaccines for prevention and therapy of lung cancer. Methods described to facilitate isolation and characterization of antigens that are immunogenic in human bronchial epithelial tumor cells. Emphasis is placed on antigens that are shared by independently derived bronchial tumors. Such molecules may be the basis for broadly effective vaccines for the prevention and therapy of lung cancer. The initial focus of these studies is an in vitro model in which multiple tumors are derived by carcinogens or oncogene transformation from the same anchorage dependent, contact inhibited, non-tumorigenic bronchial epithelial cell line. Availability of this panel of related normal and tumor cell lines facilitates the design of well-controlled experiments to identify shared tumor antigens.
The commercial application is to develop vaccines against lung cancer.
