Immunotherapeutic Effects of Dendritic Cells Pulsed with a Coden-optimized HPV 16 E6 and E7 Fusion Gene in Vivo and in Vitro

Background: : Cervical cancer is the second most common cause of cancer related death of women. PersistentHPV infection, especially with high-risk types such as HPV16 and HPV18, has been identified to be the primarycause of cervical cancer. E6 and E7 are the major oncoproteins of high-risk HPVs, which are expressed exclusivelyin HPV infected tissues, and thereby represent ideal therapeutic targets for immunotherapy of cervical cancer.Materials and
Methods: In this work, we used recombinant adenovirus expressing coden-optimized HPV16 E6and E7 fusion protein (Ad-ofE6E7) to prime dendritic cells (DC-ofE6E7), to investigate the ability of primed DCvaccine in eliciting antitumor immunity in vitro and vivo.
Results: Our results indicated that DC-ofE6E7 vaccineco-culturing with splenocytes could strongly induce a tumor-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responseand kill the TC-1 cells effectively in vitro. Moreover, DC-ofE6E7 vaccine induced protective immunity againstthe challenge of TC-1 cancer cells in vivo.
Conclusions: The results suggested that the HPV16 ofE6E7 primedDC vaccine has potential application for cervical cancer immunotherapy.