Kobayashi Hiroya, Celis Esteban
Department of Pathology, Asahikawa Medical College, Asahikawa, Japan.
Curr Opin Immunol. 2008 Apr;20(2):221-7. doi: 10.1016/j.coi.2008.04.011. Epub 2008 May 20.
Because T lymphocytes have the capacity to recognize tumor cells, significant efforts are being devoted towards the development of T cell-based immunotherapy for cancer. Most of this work has centered in the induction of anti-tumor CD8 T cells, which exhibit cytolytic activity towards tumor cells expressing tumor-specific or tumor associated antigens. Unfortunately to this day, T cell-based immunotherapy for cancer remains suboptimal. One of the possible explanations is that these immunotherapies have ignored the role that CD4 T helper lymphocytes play in the generation and persistence of CD8 T cell responses. Thus, we believe that in order to obtain clinical benefits T cell-based immunotherapy must stimulate both CD8 and CD4 tumor-reactive T cell responses. During the past seven years our group has focused on the identification of CD4 T cell epitopes from tumor-associated and tumor-specific antigens that could be used to complement the already identified CD8 T cell epitopes to produce effective vaccination strategies against numerous tumor types. We will describe here the strategy we used that resulted in the identification and characterization of numerous CD4 T cell epitopes that are applicable to developing therapies against hematological malignancies and solid tumors.
由于T淋巴细胞具有识别肿瘤细胞的能力,人们正在大力开展基于T细胞的癌症免疫疗法的研发工作。这项工作大多集中在诱导抗肿瘤CD8 T细胞,这些细胞对表达肿瘤特异性或肿瘤相关抗原的肿瘤细胞具有细胞溶解活性。遗憾的是,时至今日,基于T细胞的癌症免疫疗法仍未达到最佳效果。一种可能的解释是,这些免疫疗法忽视了CD4辅助性T淋巴细胞在CD8 T细胞反应的产生和持续存在中所起的作用。因此,我们认为,为了获得临床益处,基于T细胞的免疫疗法必须同时刺激CD8和CD4肿瘤反应性T细胞反应。在过去七年中,我们团队专注于从肿瘤相关抗原和肿瘤特异性抗原中鉴定CD4 T细胞表位,这些表位可用于补充已鉴定的CD8 T细胞表位,以制定针对多种肿瘤类型的有效疫苗接种策略。我们将在此描述我们所采用的策略,该策略导致鉴定和表征了许多适用于开发针对血液系统恶性肿瘤和实体瘤疗法的CD4 T细胞表位。