( ed in her lab RPL8 is an ideal vaccin...)Novel antigen-cloning technique may boost efforts to develop a melanoma vaccine

ed in her lab, RPL8, is an ideal vaccine candidate because it has the potential for eliciting both helper T cells and CTL responses, Herlyn says. RPL8 is a protein involved in protein synthesis and is also expressed in normal cells. Herlyn's study shows that RPL8 is over-expressed not only in melanoma, but also in breast cancer cells and gliomas, the most common type of brain tumor, indicating that it has potential as a vaccine for patients with these tumors.

In their study, the researchers used their new cloning technique to clone copies of the RPL8 antigen from a melanoma. The scientists then showed that a peptide of RPL8 could stimulate a response in helper T cell clones and lymphocytes in four out of nine melanoma patients. The antigen created no response in cells taken from healthy donors.

The study also showed that RPL8 might contain multiple regions that are capable of eliciting an immune response, suggesting that RPL8 may be an ideal vaccine target for patients that display this antigen in tumors. According to Herlyn, these findings are important because there aren't many vaccines in development to trigger a helper T cell response for many types of cancer.

"Most of the cloned melanoma antigens that are known to target helper T cells are mutated and individual-specific, meaning that they may work in treating a single individual but will be ineffective in treating a large percentage of patients," Herlyn says.

Herlyn notes that the new antigen-cloning technique developed for this study is a major advance over the cumbersome method previously required to accomplish the task, and she anticipates that experimental vaccine developers will find it of significant value in their work.

Both the new and the old methods begin with the same steps. In order to identify and clone an antigen, researchers start with a melanoma cell or other cell of interest likely to contain relevant antigens. Based on the genes in that cell,
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Source:The Wistar Institute

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