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From the * Department of Immunohematology and Blood Bank, University Hospital Leiden, 2300 RC Leiden, the Netherlands; The tumor suppressor protein p53 is overexpressed in close to 50% of all human malignancies.
The p53 protein is therefore an attractive target for immunotherapy. Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) recognizing a murine wild-type p53 peptide, presented by the major histocompatibility
complex class I molecule H-2Kb, were generated by immunizing p53 gene deficient (p53
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Free University Hospital,
1007 MB Amsterdam, The Netherlands; § Department of Pathology, University Hospital Leiden,
2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands; and
Cancer Immunology Program, Cardinal Bernadin Cancer
Center, Loyola University of Chicago, Maywood, Illinois 60153
/
)
C57BL/6 mice with syngeneic p53-overexpressing tumor cells. Adoptive transfer of these
CTLs into tumor-bearing p53 +/+ nude mice caused complete and permanent tumor eradication. Importantly, this occurred in the absence of any demonstrable damage to normal tissue.
When transferred into p53 +/+ immunocompetent C57BL/6 mice, the CTLs persisted for
weeks in the absence of immunopathology and were capable of preventing tumor outgrowth.
Wild-type p53-specific CTLs can apparently discriminate between p53-overexpressing tumor cells and normal tissue, indicating that widely expressed autologous molecules such as p53 can
serve as a target for CTL-mediated immunotherapy of tumors.
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