Ajou University develops anti-cancer vaccine technology using antiviral immune cells in cancer patients

[한국대학신문 조영은 기자] A Korean research team has developed an anti-cancer vaccine technology that uses antiviral immune cells that already exist in a cancer patient’s body to kill cancer cells. It is expected to be utilized as a highly scalable therapeutic anticancer vaccine that can be applied to many patients.

Ajou University (President Choi Ki-joo) announced on the 27th that Professor Kim Yong-seong of the Department of Applied Chemistry and Biotechnology and Graduate School of Molecular Science and Technology has developed a general-purpose anti-cancer vaccine technology that uses antiviral immune cells as tumor killer cells.

The related paper is ‘Antibody-mediated delivery of a viral MHC-I epitope into the cytosol of target tumor cells repurposes virus-specifc CD8+ T cells for cancer using an antibody. A renowned academic journal in the field of cancer as ‘immunotherapy’ <분자암(Molecular Cancer)>It was published on the 22nd of this month. Professor Cheol-ho Kim of Ajou University College of Medicine participated in the study together.

Ajou University research team started this research with the question, ‘Is there no way to treat cancer using antiviral immune cells already formed in the body?’ Antiviral immune cells are commonly infected during life or are produced in the body after receiving a vaccine in childhood.

In fact, even if we are infected with the influenza virus or cytomegalovirus (CMV) that causes the flu, it is possible to maintain health and live without major problems in the body. ) is activated to remove infected cells.

Many of these antiviral CTLs exist as memory T cells in the human body, but in the case of cancer cells, they cannot be recognized and therefore cannot be removed. To remove cancer cells using antiviral immune cells, virus antigens are presented on the surface of cancer cells as if infected with a virus, so that virus-specific CTLs recognize and remove cancer cells as virus-infected cells. To do this, a technology that can deliver the viral antigen CTL epitope to the cytoplasm of target tumor cells and present them on the surface of cancer cells is required.

The research team at Ajou University has developed an anticancer vaccine fusion antibody that fuses the virus antigen CTL epitope with the ‘cell penetrating antibody’ technology that has been researched for the past several years. This opens the way for the presentation of viral antigens on the surface of target cancer cells.

The research team attempted to develop an antigen derived from cytomegalovirus (CMV) as an anticancer vaccine. This is because 60-90% of the world’s population is infected with cytomegalovirus and CMV-specific CTLs are activated memory cells and exist at high frequency in the body, which has a large ripple effect.

The research team confirmed that the cytoplasmic penetrating antibody loaded with CMV antigen specifically presents the CMV antigen only to the surface of the target cancer cell, and that the labeled cancer cell is recognized and killed by CMV-specific CTL derived from healthy human blood. In addition, it was confirmed that this fusion antibody effectively induced tumor growth inhibition in a mouse human tumor transplantation model.

The currently used anticancer vaccine technology for treatment is expensive and has poor scalability in that it is necessary to identify cancer-specific new antigens tailored to each patient. However, the technology developed through this study can be viewed as a highly scalable anti-cancer vaccine technology in that it can be applied to many patients after quickly diagnosing the presence of antiviral immune cells in a patient.

Professor Kim said, “In addition to the cytomegalovirus, antiviral immune cells receive a vaccine such as the Corona 19 virus (SARS-CoV-2), and present various viral antigens present in the body to cancer cells, a therapeutic anti-cancer vaccine platform that can be applied to various tumors “This is a new technology that can overcome the limitations of the existing patient-specific anti-cancer vaccine technology, and it can be used in combination with other immunotherapy and anti-cancer therapies, so it is expected to be developed as an innovative technology that maximizes the effect of cancer treatment.” explained.

Meanwhile, this research was conducted as a support project for the Samsung Future Technology Development Center supported by Samsung Electronics.