K. Chikamatsu et al., Generation of anti-p53 cytotoxic T lymphocytes from human peripheral bloodusing autologous dendritic cells, CLIN CANC R, 5(6), 1999, pp. 1281-1288
CTLs recognizing the HLA-A2.1-restricted, wild-type sequence p53 epitopes p
53(149-157) and p53(264-272) were generated from CDS-enriched populations o
f nonadherent peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) obtained from healthy don
ors. The PBLs were restimulated in vitro with peptide-pulsed granulocyte ma
crophage colony-stimulating factor- and interleukin (TL) il-induced autolog
ous dendritic cells in the presence of IL-6 and IL-12 and subsequently cult
ivated with IL-1 alpha, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, and IL-7. Bulk anti-p53(264-272)
CTL populations were generated from PBLs obtained from two of five donors.
Both CTL populations were cytotoxic against peptide-pulsed HLA-A2(+) target
cells, but not against untreated target cells. A CD8(+) anti-p53 CTL clone
designated p264#2 was isolated from one of the bulk populations. It was fo
und to have an intermediate affinity of approximately 10(-9) M for the epit
ope and to mediate cytotoxicity against several human tumor cell lines, inc
luding the squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck cell line SCC-9, wh
ich is known to present the wild-type sequence p53(264-272) epitope, In add
ition, CTLs reactive against p53(149-157)-pulsed targets as well as a HLA-A
2(+) tumor cell line were cloned from a bulk population of antitumor CTLs o
btained from one of the five normal PBLs restimulated with this epitope, Th
e results indicate that CTLs recognizing wild-type sequence epitopes can be
generated from precursors present in PBLs obtained from some normal indivi
duals using autologous dendritic cells as antigen-presenting cells and sugg
est that vaccine strategies targeting these epitopes can lead to antitumor
CTL generation, thereby emphasizing the therapeutic potential of p53-based
cancer vaccines.