A long, naturally presented immunodominant epitope from NY-ESO-1 tumor antigen: implications for cancer vaccine design.

The tumor antigen NY-ESO-1 is a promising cancer vaccine target. We describe here a novel HLA-B7-restricted NY-ESO-1 epitope, encompassing amino acids 60-72 (APRGPHGGAASGL), which is naturally presented by melanoma cells. The tumor epitope bound to HLA-B7 by bulging outward from the peptide-binding cleft.

Induction of tumor-specific T cell memory by NK cell-mediated tumor rejection.

Natural killer (NK) cells may modulate the development of adaptive immune responses, but until now there has been little evidence to support this hypothesis. We investigated the primary and secondary immunity elicited by various tumor cell lines that express CD70 and interact with CD70 ligand (CD27), which is constitutively expressed on NK cells. CD70 expression enhanced primary tumor rejection in vivo as well as T cell immunity against secondary tumor challenge.