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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Oct 6.
Published in final edited form as: Mol Pharm. 2017 Aug 28;14(10):3312–3321. doi: 10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.7b00367

Figure 1.

Figure 1

The iTEP-delivered, MMP-9-sensitive vaccine that enables direct epitope-loading. The vaccine, which contains a MMP-9 cleavage site, is able to take advantage of MMP-9 ((shown as red scissors) secreted from and surrounding DCs to release CTL epitopes. The MMP-9 cleave the epitopes from the vaccines and facilitate an accumulation of the epitopes around DCs. The direct epitope loading occurs when these epitopes, at high concentration, replace the predecessor epitopes bound with MHC-I on DC surfaces.