Creative BioMart's recombinant protein expression vector construction and expression services are available for tumor-associated antigens. The service is designed to help researchers develop therapeutic targets against tumor-specific T cell lines. Our team has years of experience in recombinant protein expression services to help expedite the production of your target peptides.

Tumor Immunity and Tumor Therapy Development

Tumor immunotherapy aims to recognize tumor antigenic peptides by the host, so it is crucial to decipher the mechanisms of tumor immunity and immune evasion through major histocompatibility complex class I (MHCI). Active cancer immunotherapy aims to activate the adaptive immune system of cancer patients to destroy tumors and prevent their recurrence. The key effector cells are anti-tumor cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTLs), which recognize and kill tumor cells. Therefore, strategies aimed at activating antitumor CTLs found in the blood and tumors of cancer patients are expected to generate robust and durable antitumor responses. Recent years have seen major breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy due to the development of adoptive T-cell therapy and the use of monoclonal antibodies that block the CTLA-4 and programmed cell death 1 (PD1) immune checkpoints. Unfortunately, deleterious autoimmune side effects have been observed with current therapies, possibly due to the destruction of peripheral tolerance to normal tissue-expressed antigens. This means that knowledge about the involvement of MHCI in tumor immunity remains to be discovered.

Fig.1 Tumor antigens recognized by cytolytic T lymphocytes. (Vigneron N, 2015)

Identification and Expression of CTLs-associated Antigens

The development of antigenic epitopes in current tumor vaccines is accomplished by isolating antitumor CTL clones expressing antigens from the blood or tumors of cancer patients. Our platform provides tumor antigen identification and cloning expression services, facilitating epitope analysis and clonal expression from antigen-expressing anti-tumor CTL clones. This service is designed to help researchers rapidly resolve tumor cell surface epitopes from patients. There are currently three strategies for the identification of CTLs-related antigens.

Peptide-encoding gene-expressing clones were isolated by transfecting tumor cDNA libraries, and the transfected cells were tested for their ability to activate CTL clones. This service can rely on our recombinant protein expression service, which can be used for the expression of antigenic peptide-HLA complexes in tumor therapy development. Recombinant proteins obtained through this service can be used to test the function of CTLs or to screen functional CTLs. Our recombinant protein expression platform can construct complexes of HLA with defined fragments encoding antigenic peptides and transfect fragments of identified genes.

Tumor-associated antigenic peptides are identified by "reverse immunology" methods. Select peptides with sufficient HLA-binding motifs within the protein of interest to test HLA-binding properties. These proteins are often synthesized from proteins encoded by mutated oncogenes or from genes selectively expressed or overexpressed by tumors. Our in vitro expression platforms allow you to express and test the HLA-binding properties of potential peptides from proteins of interest.

Identification or confirmation of HLA relevance of peptides that have undergone post-translational modifications, such as serine/threonine phosphorylation, glycosylation-dependent asparagine deamidation, or peptide splicing, by mass spectrometry. Our recombinant protein expression platform can provide you with in vitro expression services for epitopes of interest.

Fig.2 Featured recombinant protein expression service and CTLs-related epitope development.

If you are interested in our services, please contact us.

Reference

• Vigneron N. Human tumor antigens and cancer immunotherapy[J]. BioMed research international, 2015, 2015.