Sharon Mavroukakis

TL;DR: The capacity of a CD25-directed immunotoxin to selectively mediate a transient partial reduction in circulating and tumor-infiltrating Treg cells in vivo is demonstrated and it is suggested that more comprehensive Treg cell elimination may be required to bolster antitumor responses in patients with metastatic melanoma.

TL;DR: Of 13 patients with cells available before and after immunization, no patient exhibited evidence of the development of anti-gp100 cell responses using in vitro boost assays, and it was unable to demonstrate significant clinical or immunologic responses to plasmid DNA encoding the "self" nonmutated gp100 tumor antigen.

TL;DR: Two consecutive clinical trials evaluating the impact of immunization with both human leukocyte antigen class I- and class II-restricted peptides from the gp100 melanoma antigen find that the sequential, nonrandomized nature of patient enrollment for the two trials may account for the differences in immunologic response.

TL;DR: The data underscore the importance of modifying anchor residues of nonmutated self-antigen peptides to generate cellular immune responses after immunization and support the further investigation of recombinant fowlpox viruses encoding modified epitopes administered in combination with IL-2.

TL;DR: Questions are raised about the use of synthetic peptides derived from NY-ESO-1 as a sole form of immunization, as vaccination with the HLA-A2-restricted epitope generated primarily T cells that did not recognize tumor after in vitro sensitization.