Journal of Allergy & Therapy

HAGE-derived vaccines for the treatment of patients with TNBC patients that are predicted to have high risk of relapsed and poor survival rate, as assessed by a newly identified immune-gene signature

11^th International Conference on ALLERGY, ASTHMA & CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY

September 07-08, 2017 | Edinburgh, Scotland

Stephanie E McArdle, Divya Nagarajan, Gemma Foulds, Lindy Durrant, Dennis Christensen, Stephen Y T Chan, Sergio Rutella and A Graham Pockley

The John van Geest Cancer Research Centre, Nottingham Trent University, Clifton campus, Nottingham, NG11 8NS
Clinical Oncology, Nottingham City Hospital, Hucknall Road, Nottingham, NG5 1PB, UK.
Statens Serum Institut, 5 Artillerivej, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark.
Clinical Oncology Department, Nottingham University Hospitals, Nottingham NG5 1PB, UK

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Allergy Ther

Abstract:

Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) consists of very heterogeneous subgroups of breast cancers with significant clinical challenge, the prognosis and treatment of which remains poor and limited due to the lack of targeting structures for existing therapies. We hypothesised that disease recurrence and therapeutic resistance in those patients could be influenced/predicted by tumour-related immune-regulatory events that are reflected by changes in the immune phenotypes in the periphery. It is conceivable that the analysis of immune gene transcripts in the blood will inform clinical decisions and help predict which patients are likely to respond/benefit from chemo- and/or immune-therapy. Although, breast cancer has not traditionally been viewed as being particularly susceptible to immunotherapeutic approaches, recent evidence has demonstrated a role for immune surveillance in determining patient outcome. Moreover, recent data suggest that some patients with TNBC may benefit from immune-stimulating therapies that may act synergistically when combined with chemotherapeutic drugs and tumour vaccines targeting cancer specific antigens (CSAs) expressed in TNBC. We have found that the cancer testis antigen HAGE (DDX43, CT13) is expressed in 43% of patients with TNBC. In this study, we have assessed the potential value of a newly identified HAGE-derived vaccine, as administered using two different delivery systems, for the treatment of TNBC patients using pre-clinical models. We have also used the nanoString nCounterâ?¢ FLEX amplification-free gene profiling platform to determine whether the immune-related-gene profiles in the PBMC of TNBC patients could predict patients with high risk of recurrence and poor survival rate. We therefore propose that TNBC patients with such a gene profile may benefit from a HAGE-derived vaccine.