Development and immunological evaluation of HLA-specific chronic myeloid leukemia polyepitope vaccine in Chinese population

• We construct a novel chronic myeloid leukemia polyepitope dentritic cell (DC) vaccine (DC-BCR/ABL*WT1).
• DC-BCR/ABL*WT1 is more specific to Chinese population.
• DC-BCR/ABL*WT1 demonstrates strong immune response to BCR/ABL(+) patients.

BackgroundBCR/ABL and Wilms’ tumor 1 (WT1) are an ideal tumor associated antigens which can be used to develop a potential chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) dentritic cell (DC) vaccine. Here, we constructed a novel polyepitope vaccine which used recombinant lentiviral vector carrying BCR/ABL and WT1 genes, and determined the immunological effects of this vaccine in vitro.MethodsThe DC vaccine was constructed using lentiviral vector transduced DCs. T lymphocytes were stimulated with DC vaccine and then co-cultured in vitro with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from CML or ALL patients, respectively. The cytotoxicity of proliferous cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) was determined by the LDH assay. The IFN-γ production of CTLs was detected using ELISPOT assay.ResultsWe constructed an lentiviral vector encoding 50 different epitopes from BCR/ABL and WT1 antigens, and transferred it into DCs to prepare the DC vaccine successfully. The in vivo stimulation of CTLs with this DC vaccine were proved to show strong cytotoxicity and produce high level of IFN-γ.ConclusionsThe novel recombinant lentiviral polyepitope DC vaccine is a promising candidate for clinical trials and may be an effective approach for CML immunotherapy.