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Updated: Jun 30, 2025
Modeling Breast Cancer via an Intraductal Injection of Cre-expressing Adenovirus into the Mouse Mammary Gland
Published on: June 7, 2019
Introduction of a new recombinant vaccine based on GRP78 for breast cancer immunotherapy and evaluation in a mouse
Hamed Zare1, Hamid Bakherad2,3, Arman Nasr Esfahani2
1Recombinant Proteins Department, Breast Cancer Research Center, Motamed Cancer Institute, ACECR, Tehran, Iran.
Introduction:
Breast cancer is one of the most prevalent malignancies in women. Several treatment options are available today, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. Immunotherapy, as a highly specific therapy, involves adaptive immune responses and immunological memory. In our present research, we used the recombinant C-terminal domain of the GRP78 (glucose- regulated protein 78) protein to induce an immune response and investigate its therapeutic impact in the 4T1 breast cancer model.
Methods:
BALB/c mice were immunized with the cGRP78 protein. The humoral immune response was assessed by ELISA. Then, BALB/c mice were injected subcutaneously with 1×106 4T1 tumor cells. Subsequently, tumor size and survival rate measurements, MTT, and cytokine assays were performed.
Results:
The animals receiving the cGRP78 vaccine showed significantly more favorable survival and slower tumor growth rates compared with unvaccinated tumor-bearing mice as the negative control mice. Circulating levels of tumoricidal cytokines such as IFNγ were higher, whereas tolerogenic cytokines such as IL-2, 6, and 10 either did not increase or had a decreasing trend in mice receiving cGRP78.
Conclusion:
cGRP78 vaccines generated potent immunotherapeutic effects in a breast cancer mouse model. This novel strategy of targeting the GRP78 protein can promote the development of cancer vaccines and immunotherapies for breast cancer malignancies.
