Abstract 3570: Prospects for personalized cancer vaccines: The oncolytic and immunotherapeutic HSV-1(VC2) virus expressing an ovalbumin (OVA) antigen elicits robust anti-OVA immune responses

Cancers result from unique cellular transformation events resulting in the expression of cancer antigens that vary widely among different types of cancers. Ideally, a personalized cancer treatment approach needs to target specific cancer antigen. Efforts to induce specific immune responses against tumor associated antigens (TAAs) include the expression of TAAs through viral vectors capable of expressing multiple antigens. We have previously shown that the HSV-1(VC2) vaccine vector can induce potent antitumor immune responses utilizing the B16F10-derived syngeneic melanoma mouse model. To investigate whether heterologous antigens expressed by this vaccine vector could elicit potent immune responses, we generated the recombinant virus VC2-OVA that expresses the ovalbumin antigen (OVA) fused in-frame at the amino terminus of the viral VP26 protein. Western blot analysis of infected cells in cell culture showed efficient expression of the OVA-VP26 protein. The anti-tumor efficacy of the VC2-OVA virus was tested in the B16cOVA and E.G7-OVA mouse models that constitutively express the OVA antigen to test whether this vaccine can either prevent the formation of new tumors (prophylactic modality) or reduce tumor metastasis (therapeutic modality). In addition, we evaluated the differences between intradermal, subcutaneous, and intramuscular routes of vaccination with VC2-OVA. Treatment with VC2-OVA resulted in significant reduction of tumor formation and metastasis in both the prophylactic and therapeutic modalities. Importantly, the anti-tumor efficacy was dependent on the specific mouse tumor model. Further, we found that subcutaneous and intradermal was superior to intramuscular vaccination. The VC2 virus is available as a bacterial artificial chromosome allowing for the rapid isolation of recombinant VC2-derived virus expressing multiple tumor antigens. Therefore, these results demonstrate that the VC2 vaccine virus can be used to produce personalized cancer vaccines targeting specific TAAs.

Citation Format: Ifeanyi K. Uche, Brent Stanfield, Jared Rudd, Konstantin Kousoulas, Paul J. Rider. Prospects for personalized cancer vaccines: The oncolytic and immunotherapeutic HSV-1(VC2) virus expressing an ovalbumin (OVA) antigen elicits robust anti-OVA immune responses [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 3570.

Noncoding RNAs and Deep Learning Neural Network Discriminate Multi-Cancer Types

Detecting cancers at early stages can dramatically reduce mortality rates. Therefore, practical cancer screening at the population level is needed. To develop a comprehensive detection system to classify multiple cancer types, we integrated an artificial intelligence deep learning neural network and noncoding RNA biomarkers selected from massive data. Our system can accurately detect cancer vs. healthy objects with 96.3% of AUC of ROC (Area Under Curve of a Receiver Operating Characteristic curve), and it surprisingly reaches 78.77% of AUC when validated by real-world raw data from a completely independent data set. Even validating with raw exosome data from blood, our system can reach 72% of AUC. Moreover, our system significantly outperforms conventional machine learning models, such as random forest. Intriguingly, with no more than six biomarkers, our approach can easily discriminate any individual cancer type vs. normal with 99% to 100% AUC. Furthermore, a comprehensive marker panel can simultaneously multi-classify common cancers with a stable 82.15% accuracy rate for heterogeneous cancerous tissues and conditions. This detection system provides a promising practical framework for automatic cancer screening at population level. Key points: (1) We developed a practical cancer screening system, which is simple, accurate, affordable, and easy to operate. (2) Our system binarily classify cancers vs. normal with >96% AUC. (3) In total, 26 individual cancer types can be easily detected by our system with 99 to 100% AUC. (4) The system can detect multiple cancer types simultaneously with >82% accuracy.

Intramuscular vaccination of mice with the human herpes simplex virus type-1(HSV-1) VC2 vaccine, but not its parental strain HSV-1(F) confers full protection against lethal ocular HSV-1 (McKrae) pathogenesis

Herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1) can cause severe ocular infection and blindness. We have previously shown that the HSV-1 VC2 vaccine strain is protective in mice and guinea pigs against genital herpes infection following vaginal challenge with HSV-1 or HSV-2. In this study, we evaluated the efficacy of VC2 intramuscular vaccination in mice against herpetic keratitis following ocular challenge with lethal human clinical strain HSV-1(McKrae). VC2 vaccination in mice produced superior protection and morbidity control in comparison to its parental strain HSV-1(F). Specifically, after HSV-1(McKrae) ocular challenge, all VC2 vaccinated- mice survived, while 30% of the HSV-1(F)- vaccinated and 100% of the mock-vaccinated mice died post challenge. VC2-vaccinated mice did not exhibit any symptoms of ocular infection and completely recovered from initial conjunctivitis. In contrast, HSV-1(F)-vaccinated mice developed time-dependent progressive keratitis characterized by corneal opacification, while mock-vaccinated animals exhibited more severe stromal keratitis characterized by immune cell infiltration and neovascularization in corneal stroma with corneal opacification. Cornea in VC2-immunized mice exhibited significantly increased infiltration of CD3⁺ T lymphocytes and decreased infiltration of Iba1+ macrophages in comparison to mock- or HSV-1(F)-vaccinated groups. VC2 immunization produced higher virus neutralization titers than HSV-1(F) post challenge. Furthermore, VC-vaccination significantly increased the CD4 T central memory (TCM) subsets and CD8 T effector memory (TEM) subsets in the draining lymph nodes following ocular HSV-1 (McKrae) challenge, then mock- or HSV-1(F)-vaccination. These results indicate that VC2 vaccination produces a protective immune response at the site of challenge to protect against HSV-1-induced ocular pathogenesis.

Crosstalk between HIV and hepatitis C virus during co-infection

An estimated one-third of individuals positive for HIV are also infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Chronic infection with HCV can lead to serious liver disease including cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Liver-related disease is among the leading causes of death in patients with HIV, and individuals with HIV and HCV co-infection are found to progress more rapidly to serious liver disease than mono-infected individuals. The mechanism by which HIV affects HCV infection in the absence of immunosuppression by HIV is currently unknown. In a recent article published in BMC Immunology, Qu et al. demonstrated that HIV tat is capable of inducing IP-10 expression. Further, they were able to show that HIV tat, when added to cells, was able to enhance the replication of HCV. Importantly, the increase in HCV replication by tat was found to be dependent on IP-10. This work has important implications for understanding the effect HIV has on the outcome of HCV infection in co-infected individuals. The findings of Qu et al. may inform the design of intervention and treatment strategies for co-infected individuals.Please see related article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2172/13/15.

A liver-specific microRNA binds to a highly conserved RNA sequence of hepatitis B virus and negatively regulates viral gene expression and replication

Regulated gene expression and progeny production are essential for persistent and chronic infection by human pathogens, such as hepatitis B virus (HBV), which affects >400 million people worldwide and is a major cause of liver disease. In this study, we provide the first direct evidence that a liver-specific microRNA, miR-122, binds to a highly conserved HBV pregenomic RNA sequence via base-pairing interactions and inhibits HBV gene expression and replication. The miR-122 target sequence is located at the coding region of the mRNA for the viral polymerase and the 3' untranslated region of the mRNA for the core protein. In cultured cells, HBV gene expression and replication reduces with increased expression of miR-122, and the expression of miR-122 decreases in the presence of HBV infection and replication. Furthermore, analyses of clinical samples demonstrated an inverse linear correlation in vivo between the miR-122 level and the viral loads in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells of HBV-positive patients. Our results suggest that miR-122 may down-regulate HBV replication by binding to the viral target sequence, contributing to the persistent/chronic infection of HBV, and that HBV-induced modulation of miR-122 expression may represent a mechanism to facilitate viral pathogenesis.

Rapid prototyping of pulse oximeter

Measurement of oxygen saturation levels in blood is a vital activity during most medical treatments. A pulse oximeter is a device most commonly used to perform this measurement. It provides convenient, non-invasive and continuous monitoring of oxygen levels in a human body. However, it is often a tedious task to select the appropriate hardware and software components to manufacture a pulse oximeter that gives accurate results. This paper describes a student project, which had the goals to expose the student to this important technique of applying rapid prototyping methods to the design of a state of the art pulse oximeter.