RECOMBINANT MUC-1 VACCINIA VIRUS - A POTENTIAL VECTOR FOR IMMUNOTHERAPY OF BREAST-CANCER

Breast cancer is considered as the major cause of mortality by cancer for women. Even if chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery have improve d the life expectancy of patients bearing rumours, breast cancer is re sponsible for the death of 42000 women per year in USA and 25000 women in France. In this context, cancer vaccines may add an attractive alt ernative therapeutic strategy to the current existing treatments. We d escribe here the construction of recombinant vaccinia viruses co-expre ssing a tumor associated antigen (MUC - 1) and an ''adjuvant'' cytokin e, which have potential applications in the active immunotherapy of br east cancer. Indeed, recombinant vaccinia viruses have been extensivel y used during the past decade to induce a protective response against a whole variety of pathogens, and has proven to be of great value in t he elicitation of a cellular immune response leading to the rejection of tumour grafts in mouse models.