Abstract PL04-04: Synthetic long peptide vaccines against established disease caused by high-risk human papillomavirus.
Authors: Melief Cornelis J. M. 
Published: June 2012

Therapeutic vaccination of persistent virus infections and associated diseases including (pre-)cancer so far has largely evaded success, mainly due to the fact that insufficiently consistent and robust effector T cell responses were induced by the commonly used vaccine constructs and formulations such as recombinant viruses and bacteria, recombinant proteins, DNA constructs, Dendritic Cell (DC) vaccines and exact HLA class I binding peptides (short peptides). Problems have been severe antigenic competion from vector sequences by recombinant viruses and bacteria, insufficiently powerful T cell generation by DNA constructs, insufficient homing to lymph nodes injected DC and antigen presentation of short peptides by non-professional antigen presenting cells in vivo, causing tolerance instead of immunity. Much more robust and consistent T cell responses can be obtained by vaccination with long (28–35 amino acid long) synthetic peptides. Such immunogens are more efficiently processed and presented than intact proteins by DC and only DC can efficiently perform this task. Moreover only concentrated antigen of choice is offered and antigenic competition therefore plays no role.

In earlier work we showed that therapeutic vaccination with a synthetic long peptide (SLP®) vaccine mediated the eradication of established human papilloma virus type 16 (HPV16)-positive tumors in mice and controlled wart growth and latent virus infection in rabbits persistently infected with cottontail rabbit papilloma virus. Subsequent phase I/II studies with an HPV16 SLP® vaccine, consisting of 13 long peptides covering the HPV16 E6 and E7 antigens, in patients with advanced HPV16-positive cervical cancer, revealed that this vaccine was safe and highly immunogenic. We then tested the clinical efficacy of this HPV16 SLP® vaccine in HPV16-induced high grade vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia (VIN3), a premalignant epithelial disorder, spontaneous regression of which occurs in less than 2% of patients and in which recurrence after standard treatment is high.

In a phase 2 trial, 20 women with VIN3 were vaccinated three times sc in the limbs with a mix of the HPV16 E6 and E7 synthetic long peptides formulated in Montanide ISA-51. The endpoints were objective clinical responses, defined as reduction of at least 50% in lesion size (partial response) or complete regressions, and HPV16-specific T-cell responses.

The vaccine was safe. At 3 and 12 months after the last vaccination an objective response was observed in 12/20 (60%) and 15/19 (79%) patients respectively. Nine of them showed a complete and durable regression of the lesions at 12 months and at 24 months. The strength of the vaccine-induced HPV16-specific T-cell response was significantly higher in the group of patients with a complete regression of their lesions compared to non-responders. Patients with large lesions were less likely to experience a complete clinical response than patients with small lesions and we ascribe this to a larger proportion of vaccine induced HPV-specific regulatory cells in the patients with large lesions.

In conclusion, treatment with the HPV16 SLP vaccine is clearly effective in patients with established VIN disease. The SLP platform lends itself for development of therapeutic vaccines against many other chronic infections and non-viral cancers. In patients with cancer, it is attractive to combine this type of vaccination with immunogenic forms of cancer chemotherapy and with immuno-modulatory drugs.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2011 Nov 12-16; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2011;10(11 Suppl):Abstract nr PL04-04.