Antigen Vaccines
Antigen vaccines use tumor-specific antigens (proteins displayed on a tumor cell) to stimulate the immune system. By injecting these antigens into the cancerous area of the patient, the immune system will produce an increased number of antibodies or cytotoxic T lymphocytes, also known as killer T cells, to attack cancer cells that carry that specific antigen. Creative Biolabs is a world leader in the field of cancer vaccine development. With our extensive experience and advanced platform, we are therefore confident in offering the best development services for antigen-based vaccines. We guarantee the finest results for our customers all over the world.
Vast amounts of antigen can be created in laboratories. Some antigens are specific for a certain type of cancer; others may induce an immune response in several cancers. Several antigen-based vaccines are being studied including kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colorectal cancer. Multiple antigens can be used in this type of vaccine to vary the immune system response.
Peptide or Protein Based Vaccines
Peptide vaccines have turned out to be the most successful approach so far for melanoma, using either free peptides or peptides coated on dendritic cells. They have the feature of focusing the immune response on specific epitopes, of particular advantage for the many tumor antigens that are self antigens. In the case of mutant molecules unique to the tumor, peptides also have the advantage of targeting only the mutant epitope that identifies the tumor cells and avoiding other parts of the antigen that would be present in normal cells. Peptides are also relatively easy to modify so that panels of variants can be studied to increase affinity for the relevant Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) molecules, to make the peptides more immunogenic, a process we have termed epitope enhancement. Likewise, the peptide sequence can be modified also to increase the affinity of the peptide-MHC complex for the T cell receptor.
Polyepitope Vaccine Technology
The development of effective peptide-based vaccines for use in humans is complex, requiring the presence of peptides presented across a broad range of human HLA types. Defining and employing multiple CTL epitopes providing broad specificity offers a viable alternative that avoids possible effects associated with toxicity, oncogenicity, and the poor immunogenicity of some full-length antigens. One technique currently under development for the treatment of a number of human diseases involves the construction of a polypeptide that links consecutive CTL epitopes together to produce a polyepitope. The first study to demonstrate that a polyepitope without flanking sequences could be used effectively employed a polypeptide encoded by a recombinant vaccinia virus (VV) vector and expressing nine epitopes derived from Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) that were recognized by six different HLA molecules. The EBV polypeptide was shown to be capable of presenting the epitopes to CTL clones and could be used to expand specific CTLs from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of EBV-positive individuals. Creative Biolabs has also extended the use of this technology to other human diseases, include infectious pathogens (e.g., HIV, HBV, HCV, malaria) and human malignancies (e.g., melanoma, breast cancer, and cervical cancer).
Undefined Antigen Based Vaccines
A rationale for using undefined antigen vaccines to treat patients with cancer is that for the most common types of malignancy, e.g. carcinomas of epithelial origin, tumor antigens have not been well-characterized. Furthermore, in contrast to defined antigen vaccines, vaccines using intact tumor cells, or preparations derived from whole tumor cells, contain not only shared tumor antigens, but also many TSA, to which the host may not have developed tolerance.
We provide development strategies that use undefined or ill-defined antigen preparations derived from whole tumor cells as the cancer vaccines, including whole tumor cells (both autologous and allogeneic), gene-modified cells (genes encoding cytokines, chemokines, and costimulatory molecules), cell-derived materials (lysates, apoptotic bodies, exosomes, heat shock proteins), and tumor-APC fusion cells.
hTERT Based Cancer Vaccine
hTERT is a catalytic subunit of telomerase, which can add a TTAGGG-like nucleic acid to the telomere at the end of the DNA strand to extend the telomeres of the DNA strand and thus makes those senescent cells that are going to undergo apoptosis become possible immortal cells like cancer cells. The activity of telomerase has increased in most cancers. Thus, hTERT, which plays a major catalytic role in telomerase, can be used as a potential cancer antigen for the development of cancer vaccines.
p16INK4a Based Cancer Vaccine
p16INK4a is cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A, also known as p16, which is a tumor suppressor protein. The function of p16INK4a is to slow down the progression of cells from the G1 phase to the S phase, and thus suppress tumor. p16INK4a has varying degrees of inactivation in approximately half of human cancers. Therefore, restoring p16INK4a will likely eliminate cancer. In this regard, design of cancer vaccines targeting p16INK4a may be an effective strategy to treat cancer.
FSPs Based Cancer Vaccine
FSPs are neo-epitopes that elicits effective anti-tumor immune responses, expressed in case of microsatellite instability (MSI), and they have been shown in experiments that FSPs can also induce strong immune responses. Developing cancer vaccines using FSPs as targets is derived from the finding that endometrial cancer, intestinal cancer, upper urinary tract cancer, colorectal cancer, and pancreatic cancer are all related to MSI to varying degrees.
Creative Biolabs is a leader in the field of vaccine development and has focused on the cancer vaccines for years. We have experienced experts and advanced platforms that are able to provide excellent services. If you are interested in our services, please contact us for more details.
All of our products can only be used for research purposes. These vaccine ingredients CANNOT be used directly on humans or animals.
