Synthetic multifunctional proteins useful for vaccination against tumor antigens

Despite enormous efforts in research, curing cancer still remains a major challenge in modern medicine. It has been proposed that cytotoxic T cells recognizing antigens that are only expressed in tumor cells could be of great value in cancer therapy, as they could contribute to the elimination of cancer cells. The main problem faced so far by this approach has been that immune responses obtained with immunogens made of current tumor-derived antigens were insufficient. Here, we intro-duce a new method that uses multifunctional fusion proteins consisting of one or more tumor antigen domain(s), an immune stimulatory domain and a carrier domain mediating assembly into virus-like particles. The resulting particles are highly immunogenic and induce strong cellular immune responses against tumor cells.

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Dr. Ruth Herzog