부산대학교 도서관

Spontaneous antitumor T cell responses in cancer patients are strongly controlled by Tregs, and increased numbers of tumor-infiltrating Tregs correlate with reduced survival. However, the tumor antigens recognized by Tregs in cancer patients and the impact of these cells on tumor-specific T cell responses have not been systematically characterized. Here we used a broad panel of long synthetic peptides of defined tumor antigens and normal tissue antigens to exploit a newly developed method to identify and compare ex vivo the antigen specificities of Tregs with those of effector/memory T cells in peripheral blood of colorectal cancer patients and healthy subjects. Tregs in tumor patients were highly specific for a distinct set of only a few tumor antigens, suggesting that Tregs exert T cell suppression in an antigen-selective manner. Tumor-specific effector T cells were detectable in the majority of colorectal cancer patients but not in healthy individuals. We detected differences in the repertoires of antigens recognized by Tregs and effector/memory T cells in the majority of colorectal cancer patients. In addition, only effector/memory T cell responses against antigens recognized by Tregs strongly increased after Treg depletion. The selection of antigens according to preexisting T cell responses may improve the efficacy of future immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune disease.
Introduction Malignant transformation and cancer progression are immunologically relevant events in immunocompetent hosts (1). Molecular identification of human tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) in the last decade has led to the development [...]