Metabolic Engineering of Cancer for Immunotargeting

描述(申请人提供)：癌症是全世界最臭名昭著的健康问题之一。该项目旨在通过免疫疗法找到治疗癌症的有效方法，即用抗癌抗体或能够激发抗癌免疫的治疗性癌症疫苗治疗患者，这被认为是理想的癌症治疗方法，因为它具有潜在的高效率和低毒性。在这方面，肿瘤相关糖类抗原(TACAs)是肿瘤表达的异常糖链，是重要的分子基序和靶点。然而，对于大多数TACA来说，一个主要的问题是它们的免疫耐受性，即它们的免疫原性很差或不具有免疫原性，这个问题通常很难通过简单地将TACA偶联到载体蛋白上来解决。另一方面，耐受的TACA往往是肿瘤细胞上相对丰富和重要的抗原，使它们成为癌症疫苗开发的非常有吸引力的靶点。该项目旨在制定一项战略，以克服对TACA的免疫耐受问题，并利用该战略设计和开发新的基于TACA的癌症免疫疗法。拟议策略的基本概念是用从非天然TACA类似物衍生的疫苗免疫癌症患者，然后用非天然糖治疗患者，这种非天然糖可以糖化肿瘤细胞，以表达非天然TACA类似物来代替天然TACA。预先刺激的免疫系统随后将识别并摧毁糖工程肿瘤。预计由非天然TACA类似物制成的疫苗很容易激发抗肿瘤免疫。该项目以前的研究已经证明了该策略的两个先决条件，即非天然TACA类似物具有高度的免疫原性，能够诱导强烈的T细胞依赖的免疫反应，以及肿瘤细胞可以有效地糖工程来表达非天然TACA类似物。该提案将继续测试各种糖结合物作为新免疫治疗策略的疫苗，验证其他相关问题，并在体外和体内评估治疗黑色素瘤、乳腺癌和结肠癌的新免疫疗法。这项建议的具体目的是：1)合成和研究与单磷酰脂A相连的非天然TACA类似物和多肽T细胞表位的新结合疫苗；2)开发一种定量分析糖工程导致的细胞上非天然TACA类似物表达的方法，并在体外评估各种抗体靶向和杀伤糖工程肿瘤细胞的有效性和选择性；以及3)基于抗体和疫苗治疗，在体内研究和评估这种新的免疫疗法在治疗癌症和防止肿瘤转移方面的疗效。预计通过拟议的研究，有希望的癌症免疫疗法可以被确定用于临床试验，并最终被开发成对黑色素瘤、乳腺癌或结肠癌的有用疗法。此外，免疫耐受问题的解决可能会对癌症免疫学和其他相关领域产生重大影响。公共卫生相关性：这项研究项目旨在建立一种新的癌症免疫治疗策略，即使用抗癌抗体或治疗性癌症疫苗治疗肿瘤，这被认为是治疗癌症的理想方法。为此，将制备由癌细胞表达的特殊碳水化合物抗原的非自然类似物，并将其偶联到载体分子上，以创造高度免疫原性的疫苗，这些疫苗可用于激发特定的免疫反应或制备针对非自然抗原的特定抗体。然后，接种疫苗的动物将被注射一种非天然糖，这种糖可以诱导癌细胞上非天然抗原的表达。随后，被激发的免疫系统或特定抗体将识别并消除标记的肿瘤。这项建议的具体目的是确定用于动物(或患者)免疫的有效疫苗和标记肿瘤细胞的适当条件，并验证新的免疫疗法治疗癌症的有效性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cancer is one of the most notorious health problems worldwide. This project aims to find effective cures for cancer by immunotherapy, namely to treat patients with anticancer antibodies or with therapeutic cancer vaccines that can provoke anticancer immunities, which is considered the ideal therapy for cancer due to its potentially high efficacy and low toxicity. In this regard, tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens (TACAs), the abnormal glycans expressed by tumors, are important molecular motifs and targets. However, one of the major issues for the majority of TACAs is their immune tolerance, i.e., they are poorly or nonimmunogenic, a problem that is frequently difficult to overcome by simply coupling TACAs to a carrier protein. On the other hand, the tolerated TACAs are often the relatively rich and important antigens on tumor cells, rendering them very attractive targets for cancer vaccine development. This project aims to establish a strategy to overcome the problem of immune tolerance to TACAs and use the strategy to design and develop new TACA-based immunotherapies for cancer. The basic concept of the proposed strategy is to immunize cancer patients with a vaccine derived from an unnatural analog of a TACA and then treat the patients with an unnatural sugar that can glycoengineer tumor cells to express the unnatural TACA analog in place of the natural TACA. The pre-stimulated immune system will subsequently recognize and destroy the glycoengineered tumors. It is anticipated that vaccines made of unnatural TACA analogs can easily provoke antitumor immunities. Previous studies of this project have proved the two prerequisites for the strategy, namely that unnatural TACA analogs are highly immunogenic to induce strong T cell dependent immune responses and that tumor cells can be effectively glycoengineered to express unnatural TACA analogs. This proposal will continue to test various glycoconjugates as vaccines for the new immunotherapeutic strategy, verify other related issues, and evaluate in vitro and in vivo the new immunotherapy for treating melanoma, breast and colon cancer. The specific aims of this proposal are: 1) to synthesize and study new conjugate vaccines with the unnatural TACA analogs linked to monophosphoryl lipid A and a peptidic T cell epitope; 2) to develop a method to quantitatively analyze the expression of unnatural TACA analogs on cells as a result of glycoengineering, and to evaluate in vitro the efficacy and the selectivity of various antibodies to target and kill glycoengineered tumor cells; and 3) to study and evaluate in vivo the efficacy of the new immunotherapy to cure cancer and prevent tumor metastasis based on antibody and vaccine treatments. It is expected that through the proposed studies promising cancer immunotherapies can be identified for clinical trials and, ultimately, be developed into useful therapies for melanoma and breast or colon cancer. Moreover, a solution to the immune tolerance problem may have a significant impact on cancer immunology and other related areas as well. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This research project aims to establish a new strategy for cancer immunotherapy, i.e., to treat tumors using anticancer antibodies or therapeutic cancer vaccines, which is considered the "ideal cure" for cancer. For this purpose, unnatural analogs of the special carbohydrate antigens expressed by cancer cells will be prepared and coupled to carrier molecules to create highly immunogenic vaccines that can be used to provoke specific immune responses or prepare specific antibodies against the unnatural antigens. The vaccinated animals will be then treated with an unnatural sugar which can induce the expression of the unnatural antigens on cancer cells. Subsequently, the provoked immune system or the specific antibodies will recognize and eliminate the labeled tumors. The specific aims of this proposal are to identify the effective vaccines for immunization of animals (or patients) and the appropriate conditions for labeling of tumor cells and to verify the efficacies of the new immunotherapies to cure cancer.