Structures suggest an approach for converting weak self-peptide tumor antigens into superagonists for CD8 T cells in cancer.

ABSTRACT: Tumors frequently express unmutated self-tumor-associated antigens (self-TAAs). However, trial results using self-TAAs as vaccine targets against cancer are mixed, often attributed to deletion of T cells with high-affinity receptors (TCRs) for self-TAAs during T cell development. Mutating these weak self-TAAs to produce higher affinity, effective vaccines is challenging, since the mutations may not benefit all members of the broad self-TAA-specific T cell repertoire. We previously identified a common weak murine self-TAA that we converted to a highly effective antitumor vaccine by a single amino acid substitution. In this case the modified and natural self-TAAs still raised very similar sets of CD8 T cells. Our structural studies herein show that the modification of the self-TAA resulted i

SUBMITTER: Wei P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8201969 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature