We formulate and analyze a mathematical model describing immune response to avascular tumor under the influence of immunotherapy and chemotherapy and their combinations as well as vaccine treatments. The effect of vaccine therapy is considered as a parametric perturbation of the model. In the case of a weak immune response, neither immunotherapy nor chemotherapy is found to cause tumor regressi...

PD-1/PD-L1 immunotherapy is viewed as having clinical benefits in advanced cancers but is effective in only a few patients, suggesting that an efficient combination approach is needed to improve efficacy. Immunohistochemistry analysis indicated that PD-L1 expression was correlated with the E6 expression in tumors from 122 lung cancer patients. The poorest survival occurred in PD-L1-positive/E6-...

Investigation into the therapeutic use of vaccines in patients with metastatic melanoma is critically important because of the lack of effective conventional modalities. The most extensively studied melanoma vaccines in clinical trials are whole-cell preparations or cell lysates that contain multiple antigens capable of stimulating an immune response. Unfortunately, in the majority of studies, ...

Although melanoma vaccines stimulate tumor antigen-specific CD8(+) T cells, objective clinical responses are rarely observed. To investigate this discrepancy, we evaluated the character of vaccine-induced CD8(+) T cells with regard to the inhibitory T-cell coreceptors PD-1 and Tim-3 in patients with metastatic melanoma who were administered tumor vaccines. The vaccines included incomplete Freun...

In the preclinical development of immunotherapy candidates, understanding the mechanism of action and determining biomarkers that accurately characterize the induced host immune responses is critical to improving their clinical interpretation. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to evaluate in vivo changes in lymph node size in response to a peptide-based cancer vaccine therapy, formulate...

Vaccination against endothelial cells (ECs) lining the tumor vasculature represents one of the most attractive potential cancer immunotherapy options due to its ability to prevent solid tumor growth. Using this approach, target antigens can be derived from ECs and used to develop a universal cancer vaccine. Unfortunately, direct immunization with EC preparations can elicit autoimmune vasculitis...

Mucin 1 (MUC1) is a tumor-associated antigen that is overexpressed in several adenocarcinomas. However, clinical trials with MUC1 showed that MUC1 is a relatively poor immunogen in humans. In view of the low immunogenicity of this protein vaccine, we designed a method based on an immunoadjuvant and immunization strategy to enhance the cellular immune response to this protein vaccine. DDA/MPL ha...

PURPOSE We tested the combination of a tumor lysate vaccine with a panel of costimulatory molecules to identify an immunotherapeutic approach capable of curing established murine gliomas. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Glioma-bearing mice were primed with a tumor lysate vaccine, followed by systemic administration of the following costimulatory ligands: OX40L, CD80, 4-1BBL, and GITRL, which were fused t...

PURPOSE Taxanes comprise some of the most widely used cancer chemotherapeutic agents. Members of this drug family, including docetaxel, are commonly used to treat breast, prostate, and lung cancers, among others. This study was designed to determine if this taxane has the ability to modulate components of the immune system independent of antitumor activity and to investigate the potential syner...

Uric acid (UA) released from dying cells has been recognized by the immune system as a danger signal. In response to UA, dendritic cells (DC) in the immune system mature and enhance the T cell response to foreign antigens. It is conceivable that the antitumor immunity of a tumor vaccine could be promoted by the administration of UA. To test this concept, we applied UA as an adjuvant to a DC-bas...