Razvoj avtolognih tumorskih vakcin (Slovene)

The current project is aimed at the development of autologous tumor vaccines expected to trigger a specific antitumor immune response. For the preparation of such vaccines we use two different approaches: Firstly, we create two-component autologous tumor vaccines by simple mixing autologous - syngeneic lethally irradiated tumor cells with a pleiotropic biological response modifier - MVE-2. The irradiated tumor cells are supposed to provide a sufficient quantity of tumor antigens, while the imunomodulator MVE-2 should at least multiply the number of cytotoxic macrophages that play a crucial role in the antitumor activity of the immune system together with CTL. Secondly, genetically manipulated autologous tumor cells are employed for the creation of another type of tumor vaccines. Namely, genes coding for various cytokines (TNF-a, IL-2, IFN-?) or growth factor (GM-CSF) are being transferred by means of molecular biology techniques into autologous tumor cells which are then lethally irradiated and utilized as tumor vaccines. The role of autologous tumor cells is thus similar to the one in two-component vaccines, with the difference that tumor cells in genetically manipulated vaccines also serve as a temporary source of cytokine or growth factor production. Cytokine or growth factor fabricated this way then stimulate the cellular antitumor immune response. The main tumor model used to evaluate the effectiveness of tumor vaccines is the intraperitoneal B-16 malignant melanoma in C57Bl/6 mice. Our interest is primarily centered on the effectiveness of vaccines in the prevention of tumor development owing to the fact that we see the prospective use of tumor vaccines as adjuvant therapy after surgery.