Jennifer Freeman
Mater Medical Research Institute
Validation of potential multiple myeloma tumour antigens for blood dendritic cell immunotherapy
Multiple myeloma is a plasma cell leukaemia that is characterised by painful lesions in the bones that may spread through the lymph nodes and into the skin. Despite advances in therapies, such the use of proteosome inhibitors or stem cell transplantation, multiple myeloma is usually incurable.
One promising therapeutic approach is to eradicate residual disease after chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation by immune therapy targeted against the myeloma cells.
Dendritic cells are specialised white blood cells that initiate and direct immune responses. We have developed a new technology to isolate blood dendritic cells and load them with antigens from cancer cells to generate immune responses. This technology will be used to discover and validate the antigens that will induce the most effective immune responses against multiple myeloma.
These studies will discover which multiple myeloma-specific antigens will be most suitable for inclusion in novel immune therapies that will target multiple myeloma.
A clinical trial will commence in 2006 using blood dendritic cells loaded with peptide antigens present on multiple myeloma to stimulate the immune system to eradicate minimal residual disease after autologous stem cell transplantation. It is anticipated that this vaccine may stimulate the patients' immune system to delay or cease progression of multiple myeloma. In the future we plan to expand this treatment to include all patients with minimal residual disease by using antigens that are not restricted to a particular HLA type by using proteins or mRNA that are highly visible target antigens on multiple myeloma cells.
