Peptide Vaccines Prevent Colon Cancer in Mouse Model

Cancer researchers working with a mouse colon-cancer model have demonstrated the effectiveness of selected peptide vaccines in protecting the animals from developing the disease.

Investigators from the University of Colorado School of Medicine (Denver, USA) created five peptides that mimicked regions in wild type and mutated T cell antigens. They used these peptides as vaccines for populations of mice. Each animal was injected twice with a candidate vaccine and was challenged a week later with colon tumor cells.

Details published in the February 26, 2010, online edition of the journal Proceedings of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) revealed that the results were quite variable. Two of the vaccines protected few or no mice, three other vaccines kept 60%, 90%, and 100% of the mice alive and tumor-free for 60 days. The successful vaccines stimulated T cells that recognized both the peptide vaccine and the naturally occurring antigen. Not surprisingly, successful antigens stimulated the growth of many more T cells than did the ineffective ones.

"We developed a peptide vaccine that binds strongly to naturally occurring T cells and stimulates them to vigorously attack cancer cells in mice,” said senior author Dr. Jill E. Slansky, associate professor of immunology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "We cannot guarantee that the vaccines we developed will make it to human trials, but our work does show that very effective cancer vaccines can be made, and outlines a new strategy for their development.”

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University of Colorado School of Medicine