An N-, C-terminally truncated basic fibroblast growth factor and LPD (liposome-polycation-DNA) complexes elicits a protective immune response against murine colon carcinoma

Abstract

Basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) is a mitogen for endothelial cells and it participates in tumor angiogenesis. active immunity against bFGF should be a promising approach for biotherapy of cancer. however, the immunity is presumably difficult to elicit by normal bFGF due to self-tolerance since bFGF is abundant in normal and malignant tissues. In addition, previous studies have shown that a complex consisting of cationic liposome and non-coding plasmid DNa is used as a stimulant of innate immunity to initiate a potent cytokine response which can inhibit tumor growth. here, with the liposome-DNa complex as adjuvant, we employed an N-, C-terminally truncated basic fibroblast growth factor (tbFGF, of human origin) as antigen to investigate the effect of immunity against bFGF on CT26 murine colon carcinoma. after six immunizations, a robust bFGF-specific immune response was elicited. subsequently, inhibition of tumor growth and a significant reduction of tumor vascularizations were observed. The antitumor effect was confirmed by adoptive therapy of activated spleen cells from the immunized mice. In vitro, CTL assay revealed that bFGF-specific cytotoxicity T lymphocytes (CTL) resulted in lysis of mouse microvascular endothelial cells (Ms1) rather than that of CT26 cells. These results suggested that antiangiogenesis treatment by bFGF-specific CTL response against microvascular endothelial cells of tumor might be a useful method for cancer therapy. © 2010 Landes Bioscience.