Patent ID: 8445447

Claim:
A method for inducing an immune response to an antigen in a human subject comprising administering to the subject (a) an antigen, and (b) a fusion protein comprising a first fusion partner comprising a variant B7-DC polypeptide fused (i) directly to a second polypeptide or, (ii) fused to a linker peptide sequence that is fused to the second polypeptide, wherein the variant B7-DC polypeptide is an isolated variant of a wildtype human B7-DC polypeptide comprising an IgV domain of B7-DC comprising an amino acid substitution in the A′, B, C, C′, C″, D, E, F, or G β strand of the wild-type human B7-DC polypeptide, and has altered affinity for PD-1 compared to the wild-type human B7-DC polypeptide.