Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Development Of Dna Vaccination Approach For Tumor Immunotargeting, Nathaniel Sangster

Summer Training Program in Cancer Immunotherapy

The emergence of immunotherapy as a prominent modality to treat cancer is a crucial advancement in the fight against this devastating disease. Although DNA vaccines against cancer have not been effective in treating pre-existing tumors, this approach holds much promise particularly for the activation of immune responses to specific mutant antigens responsible for tumorigenesis. Recent studies demonstrated that Q209L point mutation in the GNAQ (and GNA11) is responsible for the development of more than 70% of uveal melanomas and pre-malignant cutaneous blue nevus in humans. Based on the epitope prediction, we hypothesized that DNA vaccination with mutant GNAQ may result …