Improving Peptide-Based Anti-Cancer Vaccines with Phosphatase Inhibitors

Peptides have great potential for vaccines.

Peptide-based vaccines aim to increase the population and activity of pathogen/cancer-recognizing T cells by administering antigenic peptides carrying epitopes for major histocompatibility (MHC) class I and II.

These peptides are endocytosed by dendritic cells (DCs), followed by intracellular proteolytic processing to release the epitopes, the loading of the epitopes on MHC, and finally the presentation to antigen-specific T cells.

Despite numerous studies showing immunogenicity in preclinical settings, peptide-based vaccines have failed to show efficacy in clinical trials. One reason for this limited efficacy is that too low amounts of epitopes are presented on MHC.

Thus, one way to improve peptide-based vaccines is to improve their intracellular processing for MHC presentation by DCs. In this project, we will explore a novel approach for increasing the cross-presentation efficiency.

Moreover, we will perform pre-commercialization studies aimed at protecting the intellectual property, defining the commercialization strategy, and enhancing our industrial network.

We expect that our strategy will raise interest, as many pharmaceutical companies are developing peptide-based vaccines.