Background & Objective: Human papillomavirus (HPV) oncoproteins, including E6 and E7 are constitutively expressed in cervical cancer cells. These proteins are ideal targets to be used for developing therapeutic vaccines against existing HPV-associated carcinomas. The aim of this study was to measure the proliferation response rate of splenic lymphocytes derived from E7-HPV16 encoding plasmid injection on the tumor mouse model of papillomavirus.
Method: C57BL/6 mice were inoculated subcutaneous with 5× 10⁵ TC-1 cells in three times with two weeks intervals and then immunized with HPV-16 E7 DNA vaccine. The proliferation response of splenic cells was measured by MTT assay. IL12 cytokine was measured by ELISA assay and the mass of tumor was calculated with caliper for six weeks.
Results: Following the application of DNA vaccines containing E7 therapeutic gene, the proliferative response of splenic cells was provoked significanltly higher than the stimulation in control group (P<0.05). Moreover, the secretion of IL12 was significantly increased in vaccinated mice tumor tissue (P<0.05). The growth of tumor in vaccinated group was markedly decreased in comparison to PBS and pcDNA3 groups (P<0.05).
Conclusion: Our findings revealed that the application of DNA vaccine containing E7 gene in a tumor mouse model may induce anti-tumor cellular immune responses