Abstract
Introduction: In humans, approximately 5% of all cancers are attributable to HPV infection. Prophylactic vaccines can inhibit viral migration and persistence. However, requirement to develop therapeutic treatments prevails. To achieve this goal, we designed a therapeutic HPV DNA vaccine encoding a construct of E6/E7/L1 and used NSP4 antigen as adjuvant to assess efficiency of this construct in generating antigen-specific antitumor immune responses.Material and Methods: Sixty female C57BL/6 mice (6–8 weeks old) were purchased from Institute Pasteur of Iran. 30 of them became cancerous, but 30 of them were healthy control. To amplify E6/E7/L1-pcDNA3, NSP4-pcDNA3, expression vector of DH5α and TC-1 cell line were used to generate a tumor. Mice were immunized with HPV DNA vaccine. Cell proliferation was assessed by MTT assay. Finally, we assessed cytokine responses (IL-2, IL-4, INF- γ), in the serum of mice spleen cells.Result: Mice receiving the NSP4/E6-E7-L1 vaccine had the highest stimulatory index compared to other groups but it was not significant. Interleukin 4/12 and INF-γ production were significantly higher in E6-E7-L1 / NSP4 group and E6-E7-L1 group compared to other groups (P <0.05). Among different groups, E6/E7/L1 + NSP4 group was able to slow down the tumor growth process, but it was not significant (p>0.05). Among the cytokines mentioned, IFN-γ and IL-12 are among the cytokines that stimulate the Th1 pathway and IL-4 cytokine stimulates the Th2 pathway and B lymphocytes.Conclusion: Our data suggest that present vaccine can stimulate innate and acquired immunity response, and can be a therapeutic vaccine in the tumoric mice.
HPV DNA Plasmids Therapeutic Vaccine VGX-3100