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From the Center for Immunotherapy of Cancer and Infectious Diseases,
University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut 06030
Heat shock protein (HSP) preparations derived from cancer cells and virus-infected cells have
been shown previously to elicit cancer-specific or virus-specific immunity. The immunogenicity of HSP preparations has been attributed to peptides associated with the HSPs. The studies
reported here demonstrate that immunogenic HSP-peptide complexes can also be reconstituted in vitro. The studies show that (a) complexes of hsp70 or gp96 HSP molecules with a variety of synthetic peptides can be generated in vitro; (b) the binding of HSPs with peptides is
specific in that a number of other proteins tested do not bind synthetic peptides under the conditions in which gp96 molecules do; (c) HSP-peptide complexes reconstituted in vitro are immunologically active, as tested by their ability to elicit antitumor immunity and specific CD8+
cytolytic T lymphocyte response; and (d) synthetic peptides reconstituted in vitro with gp96
are capable of being taken up and re-presented by macrophage in the same manner as gp96-
peptides complexes generated in vivo. These observations demonstrate that HSPs are CD8+ T
cell response-eliciting adjuvants.
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