Funding Agency:

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

Total Project Period:

7/1/01-6/30/08

Total Project Award:

$324,000

Principal Investigator:

Hideho Okada, MD, PhD

Co-Investigators:

None

Project Summary:

We initiated a clinical trial of interleukin-4 (IL-4) gene transfected glioma cell vaccines. Ultimately, identification of tumor-specific targets is particularly important for successful and safe immunotherapy for brain tumors. We hypothesize that peripheral IL-4 glioma vaccine will enhance the induction of a humoral immune response against glioma tumor associated antigens (TAA)/tumor rejection antigens (TRA) in patients, thereby facilitating the identification of glioma TAA/TRAs by Serological Analyses of Recombinant Expression cDNA Library Screening (SEREX). cDNA libraries constructed from the patients' glioma cells will be screened for the presence of antibodies reactive to glioma specific cDNA clones. Once identified, these cDNA clones will be sequenced, and the expression profiles among various tissues will be examined to determine whether the antigens are selectively expressed in glioma cells. Clones with either restricted expression and/or mutations in gliomas will be examined for potential induction of CD8+ T cell responses and T cell immuno-epitopes will be identified. It is expected that discovery of such antigen-epitopes will enable us to design novel peptide-based immunotherapy approaches for malignant gliomas.