International conference: Progress in vaccination against cancer (PIVAC) 2002, Nottingham, UK

Excerpt

Applying new methods for detecting and quantifying responses to tumour antigens is essential for accurate evaluation of patients undergoing immunotherapy. A good example of these new approaches is MHC tetramer technology, where T cells recognizing a particular MHC-peptide combination can be identified and counted by their binding of labelled tetrameric MHC-peptide complexes. This was illustrated by A. Dodi (London) in patients with chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML). There is an "ideal" candidate antigen in CML represented by the bcr/abl fusion protein resulting from the presence of the Philadelphia chromosome. Tetramer-positive cells, recognising the HLA-A* 0301-restricted peptide KQSSKALQR which is uniquely associated with the fusion sequence, can be detected in patients. CD8⁺ T cells expand in response to peptide in vitro and are able to recognise and kill CML cells that express the bcr/abl fusion peptide, illustrating its importance as a target for immunotherapy [4]. …