title: [Possibilities of glypican-3-specific immunotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma].
abstract: The patients with hepatitis B or C based liver cirrhosis are at high risk for developing Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and HCC patients treated surgically or by other therapies are also at high risk for recurrence. As a result, the prognosis of HCC remains poor, and new therapies for the prevention of cancer development and recurrence are urgently needed. We previously reported that glypican 3 (GPC3) was over expressed specifically in HCC. In this report, we found the HLA-A2 or HLA-A24 restricted GPC3 epitope peptide, and investigated whether these peptides could induce GPC3 reactive CTLs from the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of HLA-A2+ or HLA-A24+ HCC patients. We used HLA-A2.1 (HHD) transgenic mice (Tgm) to identify the HLA-A2-restricted GPC3 epitopes. We found that these epitope peptides could induce peptide-reactive CTLs in about 50% of HLA A2+ or HLA-A24+, and GPC3+ HCC patients. Our study raises the possibility that these GPC3 peptides may therefore be applicable to cancer immunotherapy for prevention of cancer development and recurrence of HCC.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Gastroenterological Surgery, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kumamoto University.
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Komori
authors.forename: Tetsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakatsura
authors.forename: Toru
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Beppu
authors.forename: Yasuharu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nishimura
authors.forename: Hideo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Baba
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000818:Animals; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000276:immunology*; D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D053673:Glypicans / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D007167:Immunotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008875:Middle Aged; D009698:Nucleoproteins / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D053673:Glypicans; D009698:Nucleoproteins; C090319:peptide 31D