Figure 5. Tethered CD4⁺ T cell helper and minimal CD8⁺ T cell epitope vaccines lead to maximal SCC VII tumor growth inhibition.

C3H/HeJ mice vaccinated with 50 μg polyI:C alone or in combination with 5 μg solubilized PADRE(X) or Mut_44 long-mers untethered or tethered to the Mut_48.10 minimal epitope in a booster regimen 21 days apart. All sets of mice were challenged with 5 × 10⁵ live SCC VII-Luc/GFP cells 31 days after primary vaccination. Day 14 bioluminescence and tumor volume kinetics of challenged C3H/HeJ mice (n = 5–6 per group). All experiments were performed 2 or more times and data indicate mean ± SEM; (bioluminescence) *P < 0.05, and ***P < 0.001 (Student’s t test); ^††††P < 0.0001 (1-way ANOVA and Dunnett’s posthoc test relative to polyI:C); (tumor volume) ***P < 0.001 and ****P < 0.0001 (2-way ANOVA and Dunnett’s posthoc test relative to polyI:C).