Preclinical Development of a WT1 Oral Cancer Vaccine Using a Bacterial Vector to Treat Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer
Menée in vitro et à l'aide d'un modèle murin transgénique de cancer de la prostate résistant à la castration, cette étude met en évidence l'intérêt thérapeutique d'un vaccin administré par voie orale et utilisant la souche bactérienne Bifidobacterium longum modifiée de manière à exprimer partiellement la protéine WT1
Previously, we constructed a recombinant Bifidobacterium longum displaying a partial mouse Wilms' tumor 1 (WT1) protein (B. longum 420) as an oral cancer vaccine using a bacterial vector and demonstrated that oral administration of B. longum 420 significantly inhibited tumor growth compared with the Db126 WT1 peptide vaccine in the TRAMP-C2, mouse castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) syngeneic tumor model. The present study demonstrated that oral administration of 1.0×109 colony-forming units of B. longum 420 induced significantly higher cytotoxicity against TRAMP-C2 cells than intraperitoneal injection of 100
μg of Db126, and the in vivo antitumor activity of B. longum 420 in the TRAMP-C2 tumor model could be augmented by intraperitoneal injections of 250 μg of anti
–PD-1 antibody. For the clinical development, we produced the B440 pharmaceutical formulation, which is lyophilized powder of inactivated B. longum 440 displaying the partially modified human WT1 protein. We confirmed that B. longum 440 could induce cellular immunity specific to multiple WT1 epitopes. In a preclinical dosage study, B440 significantly inhibited growth of the TRAMP-C2 tumors compared with that of the control groups (PBS and B. longum not expressing WT1) at all dosages (1, 5, and 10 mg/body of B440). These mouse doses were considered to correspond with practical oral administration doses of 0.2, 1, and 2 g/body for humans. Taken together, these results suggest that the B440 WT1 oral cancer vaccine can be developed as a novel oral immuno-oncology drug to treat CRPC as a monotherapy or as an adjunct to immune checkpoint inhibitors.