Salmonella immunotherapy engineered with highly efficient tumor antigen coating establishes antigen-specific CD8+ T cell immunity and increases in antitumor efficacy with type I interferon combination therapy

• Published in: OncoImmunology
• Main Authors: Suyang Wang, Michelle Cheng, Chao-Cheng Chen, Chia-Yu Chang, Ya-Chea Tsai, Jr-Ming Yang, TC Wu, Chuan-Hsiang Huang, Chien-Fu Hung
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2024-12-01
• Subjects: Bacterial immunotherapy; CD8+ T cell; Cell penetrating peptide; Cervical cancer; Salmonella; Tumor antigen
• Online Access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/2162402X.2023.2298444
• ISSN: 2162-402X

Bacteria-based cancer therapy employs various strategies to combat tumors, one of which is delivering tumor-associated antigen (TAA) to generate specific immunity. Here, we utilized a poly-arginine extended HPV E7 antigen (9RE7) for attachment on Salmonella SL7207 outer membrane to synthesize the bacterial vaccine Salmonella-9RE7 (Sal-9RE7), which yielded a significant improvement in the amount of antigen presentation compared to the previous lysine-extended antigen coating strategy. In TC-1 tumor mouse models, Sal-9RE7 monotherapy decreased tumor growth by inducing E7 antigen-specific immunity. In addition, pairing Sal-9RE7 with adjuvant Albumin-IFNβ (Alb-IFNβ), a protein cytokine fusion, the combination significantly increased the antitumor efficacy and enhanced immunogenicity in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Our study made a significant contribution to personalized bacterial immunotherapy via TAA delivery and demonstrated the advantage of combination therapy.