Development of HPV16 mouse and dog models for more accurate prediction of human vaccine efficacy

Animal models are essential to understand the physiopathology of human diseases but also to evaluate new therapies. However, for several diseases there is no appropriate animal model, which complicates the development of effective therapies. HPV infections, responsible for carcinoma cancers, are among these. So far, the lack of relevant animal models has hampered the development of therapeutic vaccines. In this study, we used a candidate therapeutic vaccine named C216, similar to the ProCervix candidate therapeutic vaccine, to validate new mouse and dog HPV preclinical models. ProCervix has shown promising results with classical subcutaneous murine TC-1 cell tumor isografts but has failed in a phase II study.

We first generated E7/HPV16 syngeneic transgenic mice in which the expression of the E7 antigen could be switched on through the use of Cre-lox recombination. Non-integrative LentiFlash^® viral particles were used to locally deliver Cre mRNA, resulting in E7/HPV16 expression and GFP reporter fluorescence. The expression of E7/HPV16 was monitored by in vivo fluorescence using Cellvizio imaging and by local mRNA expression quantification. In the experimental conditions used, we observed no differences in E7 expression between C216 vaccinated and control groups. To mimic the MHC diversity of humans, E7/HPV16 transgenes were locally delivered by injection of lentiviral particles in the muscle of dogs. Vaccination with C216, tested with two different adjuvants, induced a strong immune response in dogs. However, we detected no relationship between the level of cellular response against E7/HPV16 and the elimination of E7-expressing cells, either by fluorescence or by RT-ddPCR analysis.

In this study, we have developed two animal models, with a genetic design that is easily transposable to different antigens, to validate the efficacy of candidate vaccines. Our results indicate that, despite being immunogenic, the C216 candidate vaccine did not induce a sufficiently strong immune response to eliminate infected cells. Our results are in line with the failure of the ProCervix vaccine that was observed at the end of the phase II clinical trial, reinforcing the relevance of appropriate animal models.