ArticleCancer immunology research2015
PD-1 or PD-L1 Blockade Restores Antitumor Efficacy Following SSX2 Epitope-Modified DNA Vaccine Immunization.
Article in Cancer immunology research, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- What Do We Have to Know about PD-L1 Expression in Prostate Cancer? A Systematic Literature Review. Part 3: PD-L1, Intracellular Signaling Pathways and Tumor Microenvironment.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Pooled it
- What Do We Have to Know about PD-L1 Expression in Prostate Cancer? A Systematic Literature Review. Part 5: Epigenetic Regulation of PD-L1.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Pooled it
- What Do We Have to Know about PD-L1 Expression in Prostate Cancer? A Systematic Literature Review. Part 4: Experimental Treatments in Pre-Clinical Studies (Cell Lines and Mouse Models).International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Phase 2 trial of pTVG-HP ± pTVG-AR DNA vaccines and pembrolizumab in patients with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2026Trial
- Androgen deprivation, androgen receptor-targeted vaccination, and nivolumab in patients with high-risk localized prostate cancer.Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2026Trial
- Phase 2 trial of T-cell activation using MVI-816 and pembrolizumab in patients with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2022Trial
- FLT PET/CT imaging of metastatic prostate cancer patients treated with pTVG-HP DNA vaccine and pembrolizumab.Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2019Trial
- Therapy-induced remodeling of the tumor immune microenvironment: Mechanistic insights and implications for immunotherapy.Chinese medical journal · 2026Review
- Prostate tumor immune microenvironment changes following immunotherapy shared by patients who developed anti-tumor response or immune-related adverse events.Oncoimmunology · 2025Article
- PD-1 blockade employed at the time CD8+ T cells are activated enhances their antitumor efficacy.Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2025Article
- Beyond the Barrier: Unraveling the Mechanisms of Immunotherapy Resistance.Annual review of immunology · 2024Review
- Combining toll-like receptor agonists with immune checkpoint blockade affects antitumor vaccine efficacy.Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2024Article
- Vaccines as treatments for prostate cancer.Nature reviews. Urology · 2023Review
- The future of cancer immunotherapy: DNA vaccines leading the way.Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2023Review
- Cancer testis antigen subfamilies: Attractive targets for therapeutic vaccine (Review).International journal of oncology · 2023Review
- Enhancedanti-tumor efficacy through a combination of intramuscularly expressed DNA vaccine and plasmid-encoded PD-1 antibody.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Article
- Development of therapeutic vaccines for the treatment of diseases.Molecular biomedicine · 2022Review
- Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
DNA vaccines have demonstrated antitumor efficacy in multiple preclinical models, but low immunogenicity has been observed in several human clinical trials. This has led to many approaches seeking to improve the immunogenicity of DNA vaccines. We previously reported that a DNA vaccine encoding the cancer-testis antigen SSX2, modified to encode altered epitopes with increased MHC class I affinity, elicited a greater frequency of cytolytic, multifunctional CD8(+) T cells in non-tumor-bearing mice. We sought to test whether this optimized vaccine resulted in increased antitumor activity in mice bearing an HLA-A2-expressing tumor engineered to express SSX2. We found that immunization of tumor-bearing mice with the optimized vaccine elicited a surprisingly inferior antitumor effect relative to the native vaccine. Both native and optimized vaccines led to increased expression of PD-L1 on tumor cells, but antigen-specific CD8(+) T cells from mice immunized with the optimized construct expressed higher PD-1. Splenocytes from immunized animals induced PD-L1 expression on tumor cells in vitro. Antitumor activity of the optimized vaccine could be increased when combined with antibodies blocking PD-1 or PD-L1, or by targeting a tumor line not expressing PD-L1. These findings suggest that vaccines aimed at eliciting effector CD8(+) T cells, and DNA vaccines in particular, might best be combined with PD-1 pathway inhibitors in clinical trials. This strategy may be particularly advantageous for vaccines targeting prostate cancer, a disease for which antitumor vaccines have demonstrated clinical benefit and yet PD-1 pathway inhibitors alone have shown little efficacy to date.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.