DNA vaccination for cancer treatment

The recent finding that inoculation with plasmids encoding a variety of proteins leads to T cell and antibody responses in vivo against these proteins provides a novel means of active specific immunisation by plasmid vaccination. The demonstration that both major histocompatibility complex (MHC) Class I- and Class II-mediated interactions can be elicited may make this approach suitable for development of tumour vaccines. Plasmids may prove to be an efficient way to build 'subunit' and multi-subunit vaccines based on the genetic changes that occur in carcinogenesis. Expression of DNA encoding fragments of tumour-specific proteins as neo-antigens or surrogate antigens in a novel context may be a means of breaking immunological tolerance and lead to the generation of tumour-specific immune responses.