A phase I study of the optimized cryptic peptide TERT(572y) in patients with advanced malignancies.

Objective: It was the aim of this study to evaluate the safety of the optimized cryptic peptide TERT(572Y) in pretreated patients with advanced cancer.

Methods: Nineteen patients with progressive and chemotherapy-refractory tumors received escalated doses (2-6 mg) of 2 subcutaneous injections of the optimized TERT(572Y) peptide followed by 4 subcutaneous injections of the native TERT(572) peptide every 3 weeks. Both TERT peptides were coinjected with adjuvant Montanide ISA51.

STEAP, a prostate tumor antigen, is a target of human CD8+ T cells.

STEAP is a recently identified protein shown to be particularly overexpressed in prostate cancer and also present in numerous human cancer cell lines from prostate, pancreas, colon, breast, testicular, cervical, bladder and ovarian carcinoma, acute lymphocytic leukemia and Ewing sarcoma. This expression profile renders STEAP an appealing candidate for broad cancer immunotherapy. In order to investigate if STEAP is a tumor antigen that can be targeted by specific CD8(+) T cells, we identified two high affinity HLA-A*0201 restricted peptides (STEAP(86-94) and STEAP(262-270)).