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Essay On Hlc Transcriptomes

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In this study, we have expanded the spectrum of HPV+ HNSCC-specific immune therapeutic targets at the CTL-epitope level and at the target tumor cell-modulatory level. We chose E2, E6 and E7-antigens, as they induce strong B-cell immunity, have been detected in pre-invasive and/or invasive cervical cancer, and we confirmed viral antigen expression in HPV16+ HNSCC transcriptomes. Most studies that have attempted to define CTL-immunogenicity from HPV16 have primarily focused on a limited number of HLA-alleles (e.g. A*02:01) and peptides from E6 and E7 (Table B1), with limited data on immunogenic targets in in HPV+ HNSCC (Ressing et al., 1995; Riemer et al., 2010; Rudolf, Man, Melief, Sette, & Kast, 2001). The 15 HLA alleles chosen for this …show more content…

However, several recent whole genome studies in HNSCCs have indicated that viral breakpoints in HPV+ HNSCCs are distributed throughout the genome, with preferential integration in the E1 region (Akagi et al., 2014; Parfenov et al., 2014b). E2 is also a larger antigen >3-times the size of E6, E7, possibly explaining the bigger spectrum of CTL-epitopes from the protein. These results, taken along with the high proportion of episomal full length HPV DNA in HNSCC lesions (Olthof et al., 2014), and our data demonstrating strong E2-specific T-cell and B-cell reactivity (Figs. 4-1, 4-2) warrant further investigation of E2 as a T-cell therapeutic target in addition to E6 and E7 in HPV+ HNSCCs.
Despite the addition of CKB antibodies in the ex vivo T-cell stimulation protocol, we detected low levels of E7-CTLs compared to E2 and E6-CTLs in this study. This can be due to 1) inaccurate prediction of CTL-epitopes, 2) inherently low immunogenicity of E7-antigen, 3) low antigen load in patients, or 4) higher levels of dysfunctional E7-specific CTLs. Our ability to accurately predict previously described epitopes from E7 and the successful identification of novel CTL-epitopes from E2 and E6 across various HLA-alleles (Fig. 4-3), argues against a sub-optimal prediction strategy. The presence of high levels of serum titers against E7 in HPV+ HNSCC patients indicates that the antigen is

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