In recent years, peptide-based therapeutic tumor vaccines have received much attention as one of the effective means of tumor immunotherapy. At present, a variety of peptide-based therapeutic cancer vaccines have been developed with remarkable success. Likewise, combinations of peptide-based vaccines and other therapies have shown superior efficacy in enhancing anti-cancer activity. Alfa Cytology has advanced vaccine development platforms and extensive experience in pancreatic cancer (PC) research. We are offering peptide-based vaccine development services for PC, including peptide-based vaccine preparation, pre-clinical studies, and neoantigen-based peptide vaccine development.
Peptide-based cancer vaccines
Peptide-based cancer vaccines typically consist of 20-30 amino acids that contain specific epitopes of antigens known to be highly immunogenic, thereby triggering the desired immune response. Generally, there are two types of peptides used in peptide vaccination, namely short peptides (8-12 amino acids) and synthetic long peptides (20 amino acids or more). Although short peptides tend to have short half-lives and are readily degraded in serum, they bind to the HLA class I groove on the surface of nucleated cells even without further processing by professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs). Short peptides are usually bound to carrier proteins, allowing them to be taken up and processed by APCs, thereby triggering an effective immune response. Compared with short peptides, synthetic long peptides are more stable and immunogenic. They are taken up and processed by APCs to produce peptides presented by HLA class I and II molecules, leading to the generation of strong and durable anti-tumor immune responses, including CD8+ T cells, CD4+ T cells, and antibody production by B cells. Peptide vaccines have several advantages over other types of vaccines, particularly in terms of safety and ease of production.
Fig. 1 Mechanism of action and optimization schematic of peptide-based cancer vaccines.
Peptide-based vaccine development for PC
Based on our accumulated in-depth knowledge of PC biology, we focus on the choices of targets, design and screening of epitope peptides, and pre-clinical study of the efficacy and safety of peptide-based PC vaccines. Our team of experts is confident in providing the best service in peptide-based vaccine development for PC and guaranteeing the best results for our customers around the world.
- Peptide-based vaccine preparation
- Target choices of peptide-based therapeutic cancer vaccines
Most peptide-based cancer vaccines are designed based on epitope peptides that elicit humoral and cellular immune responses targeting tumor antigens, including tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) or tumor-specific antigens (TSAs). There are several common tumor antigens studied for peptide-based PC vaccines, including KIF20A (TSAs), and CEA, Survivin, VEGFR (TAAs).
-Design and screening of epitope peptides
-Peptide modification
-Selection of potent adjuvants or immunostimulators
-Development of ideal delivery systems
- Peptide-based vaccine pre-clinical studies
-Selection of optimal regimens (dose, schedule, and administration route)
-Feasible and immunogenic evaluation of peptide-based vaccines
-Anti-tumor efficacy test of peptide-based vaccines
-Toxicity evaluation of peptide-based vaccines
- Neoantigen-based peptide vaccine development
The detection of neoantigens with high immunogenicity and substantial CD8+ T-cell infiltration in long-term surviving pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patients suggests that neoantigen-based cancer immunotherapy may benefit the survival of PC patients. Individualized peptide neoantigens are targeted to stimulate the human immune system to recognize and kill tumor cells, specifically by delivering neoantigens to the APC, presenting tumor-specific neoantigens to T cells, and activating cytotoxic T cells.
-Research design and consultation
-Personalized peptide neoantigen vaccine generation
-Personalized peptide neoantigen vaccine pre-clinical validation
Peptide-based cancer vaccines offer many advantages in terms of ease of production, cost-effective production, low carcinogenic potential, insensitivity to pathogen contamination, and high chemical stability. In addition, the administration is simple and the immune response can be monitored in vitro, therefore, peptide-based cancer vaccines may be a promising therapeutic approach for PC. For more information on our services, please don't hesitate to contact us.
References
- Abd-Aziz, Noraini, and Chit Laa Poh. "Development of Peptide-Based Vaccines for Cancer." Journal of Oncology 2022 (2022).
- Liu, Wensi, et al. "Peptide-based therapeutic cancer vaccine: current trends in clinical application." Cell Proliferation 54.5 (2021): e13025.
- Zhang, Lu, et al. "Peptide-based materials for cancer immunotherapy." Theranostics 9.25 (2019): 7807.