Cloning and expression of a novel target fusion protein and its application in anti-tumor therapy

Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is a 53 amino acid polypeptide and its receptor EGFR is an established therapeutic target for anti-tumor therapy. Two major categories of EGFR-targeted drugs include monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and small molecular tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). However, drug resistance occurs in a significant proportion of patients due to EGFR mutations. Since EGFR can maintain activation while abrogating the activity of mAbs or TKIs, or bypass signaling functions while successfully circumventing the EGF-EGFR switch, developing new mechanism-based inhibitors is necessary.

In this study, based on the principle of tumor immunotherapy, a recombinant protein pLLO-hEGF was constructed. The N-terminal portion contains three immunodominant epitopes from listeriolysin O (LLO) and the C-terminal includes EGF. To use EGF as a target vector to recognize EGFR-expressing cancer cells, immunodominant epitopes could enhance immunogenicity of tumor cells for immune cell activation and attack.

Recombinant protein pLLO-hEGF was successfully expressed and showed strong affinity to cancer cells. Also, pLLO-hEGF could significantly stimulate human lymphocyte proliferation and the lymphocytes demonstrated enhanced killing potency in EGFR-expressing cancer cells in vitro and in vivo.

This study can provide novel strategies and directions in tumor biotherapy.