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Blood, 1 August 2008, Vol. 112, No. 3, pp. 610-618. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on June 2, 2008; DOI 10.1182/blood-2008-01-135319.
IMMUNOBIOLOGY Depletion of human regulatory T cells specifically enhances antigen-specific immune responses to cancer vaccinesDepartments of1 Medicine, 2 Surgery, 3 Immunology, 4 Pathology, 5 Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, and 6 Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC CD4+CD25highFoxP3+ regulatory T (Treg) cells limit antigen-specific immune responses and are a cause of suppressed anticancer immunity. In preclinical and clinical studies, we assessed the immune consequences of FoxP3+ Treg-cell depletion in patients with advanced malignancies. We demonstrated that a CD25high targeting immunotoxin (denileukin diftitox) depleted FoxP3+ Treg cells, decreased Treg-cell function, and enhanced antigen-specific T-cell responses in vitro. We then attempted to enhance antitumor immune responses in patients with carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)–expressing malignancies by Treg-cell depletion. In a pilot study (n = 15), denileukin diftitox, given as a single dose or repeated dosing, was followed by immunizations with dendritic cells modified with the fowlpox vector rF-CEA(6D)-TRICOM. By flow cytometric analysis, we report the first direct evidence that circulating CD4+CD25highFoxP3+ Treg cells are depleted after multiple doses of denileukin diftitox. Earlier induction of, and overall greater exposure to, the T-cell response to CEA was observed in the multiple-dose group, but not the single-dose group. These results indicate the potential for combining Treg-cell depletion with anticancer vaccines to enhance tumor antigen-specific immune responses and the need to explore dose and schedule of Treg depletion strategies in optimiz-ing vaccine efforts. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as no. NCT00128622 [ClinicalTrials.gov] .
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