Neoantigen-specific T cell help outperforms non-specific help in multi-antigen DNA vaccination against cancer.

ABSTRACT: CD4⁺ T helper antigens are essential components of cancer vaccines, but the relevance of the source of these MHC class II-restricted antigens remains underexplored. To compare the effectiveness of tumor-specific versus tumor-unrelated helper antigens, we designed three DNA vaccines for the murine MC-38 colon carcinoma, encoding CD8⁺ T cell neoantigens alone (noHELP) or in combination with either "universal" helper antigens (uniHELP) or helper neoantigens (neoHELP). Both types of helped vaccines increased the frequency of vaccine-induced CD8⁺ T cells, and particularly uniHELP increased the fraction of KLRG1⁺ and PD-1^low effector cells. However, when mice were subsequently injected with MC-38 cells, only neoHELP vaccination resulted in s

SUBMITTER: de Graaf JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11261851 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature