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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1995 Dec 19;92(26):11993–11997. doi: 10.1073/pnas.92.26.11993

Targeting p53 as a general tumor antigen.

M Theobald 1, J Biggs 1, D Dittmer 1, A J Levine 1, L A Sherman 1
PMCID: PMC40282  PMID: 8618830

Abstract

A major barrier to the design of immunotherapeutics and vaccines for cancer is the idiosyncratic nature of many tumor antigens and the possibility that T cells may be tolerant of broadly distributed antigens. We have devised an experimental strategy that exploits species differences in protein sequences to circumvent tolerance of high-affinity T cells. HLA transgenic mice were used to obtain cytotoxic T lymphocytes specific for peptides from the human p53 tumor-suppressor molecule presented in association with HLA-A2.1. Although such p53-specific cytotoxic T cells did not recognize nontransformed human cells, they were able to lyse a wide variety of human tumor cells lines, thus confirming the existence of broadly distributed determinants that may serve as targets for immunotherapy.

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Selected References

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