Design of Poxvirus Based Vaccines for Cancer

Rapidly emerging achievements in the areas of molecular biology and immunology have led to the development of many safe and effective viral vectors that are currently in late-stage clinical trials for the treatment of numerous types of cancer. 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 poxvirus-based vaccines. We guarantee the finest results for our customers all over the world.

Poxvirus Based Vaccines

Advantages of Poxvirus Vectors

Viral vectors are among the more flexible means of enhancing the presentation of tumor antigens to the immune system. Viruses can be engineered to express entire tumor antigen genes and, often, multiple genes. Recombinant viruses can be produced more easily than whole tumor cell or dendritic cell vaccine, and in many cases are able to infect professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs), which aids their ability to induce an effective antitumor immune response. Poxviruses are attractive as viral vaccine vectors due to their ability to incorporate large quantities of DNA (including multiple transgenes), their natural immunostimulatory qualities, and their ability to express their transgenes in professional APCs, specifically DCs.

Types of Poxvirus Based Vaccines

Vaccinia Virus
  • Vaccinia Virus. Of the poxviruses, vaccinia virus is the most commonly used for cancer immunotherapy. Vaccinia virus is a double-stranded DNA virus with a linear genome of ∼190 kb, encoding about 250 genes. Vaccinia virus is best known as the live vaccine, successfully administered to over one billion people, resulting in the eradication of smallpox. As with all poxviruses, vaccinia virus replicates and transcribes its genome in the cytoplasm of the host cell. Vaccinia virus vectors efficiently infect mammalian cells, replicating for ~7 days before the infected cell is eliminated by the immune system.
  • Fowlpox Virus Modified Vaccinia Virus Ankara (MVA). MVA is a highly attenuated strain of vaccinia virus that was generated by more than 500 serial passages of a smallpox vaccine from Ankara, Turkey, in chick embryo fibroblasts, resulting in a loss of ∼10% of the vaccinia virus genome. MVA can infect mammalian cells and synthesize its encoded proteins but is unable to produce infectious viruses.
  • Avipox Viruses Including Canarypox and Fowlpox. Canarypox and fowlpox can be pathogenic in many species of wild and captive birds but are unable to productively infect primates and humans. Avipox viruses can infect mammalian cells and express their encoded transgenes for 14–21 days, but are unable to complete their life cycle and generate infectious viruses.

Our Strategies to Improve Poxviral Cancer Immunotherapy

  • Diversified Prime and Boost

Because vaccinia virus so efficiently induces a host antivirus immune response, it can only be administered 1–2 times before the generation of neutralizing antibodies makes it unable to productively infect a host and further induce an immune response against its transgene. In order to induce and support a sufficient immune response to eradicate tumor cells expressing weak tumor antigens, a cancer vaccine must be administered multiple times. For this reason, a diversified prime-boost strategy has been suggested in which a vaccinia virus vaccine vector is given as the priming vaccination and a recombinant fowlpox vaccine vector, encoding the same tumor antigen, is used in subsequent booster vaccinations.

  • Use of Multiple Costimulatory Molecules

While poxvirus vectors alone are able to induce an immune response to weak tumor antigens, this response is often not suffi cient to eradicate tumor cells. Induction of a successful T-cell response requires at least two signals between APCs and naïve T cells. To improve the immunostimulatory effect of poxviral vectors, the co-stimulatory molecule B7-1 was included in the vectors along with transgenes for the tumor antigen. It was soon discovered that adding two more co-stimulatory molecules, namely intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) and leukocyte function-associated antigen 3 (LFA-3), further improved the immunostimulatory capacity of the poxviral vectors. These co-stimulatory molecules work synergistically to improve the immune response generated by the poxviral vectors, not only by increasing the interaction time between the APC and the T cell but also by priming unique signaling pathways in the stimulated T cells.

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.


Online Inquiry

All of our products can only be used for research purposes. These vaccine ingredients CANNOT be used directly on humans or animals.

Name:
*Phone:
*E-mail Address:
*Products or Services Interested:
Project Description:

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

CONTACT US

USA

Tel:
Fax:
Email:
UK

Tel:
Email:
Germany

Tel:
Email:


Follow us on

Shopping Basket