Salmonella Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Salmonella, including details on salmonella typhimurium, food poisoning, infection, treatment.

An attenuated Salmonella oral DNA vaccine prevents the growth of hepatocellular carcinoma and colon cancer that express alpha-fetoprotein.

Chou CK, Hung JY, Liu JC, Chen CT, Hung MC

Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.

Antitumor vaccination therapies using attenuated Salmonella typhimurium carrying plasmid DNA encoding tumor-associated antigens are currently under preclinical development. In the present study, we first established a useful method to facilitate in vivo monitoring of attenuated S. typhimurium uptake using a bioluminescent lux gene operon plasmid. Following transformation with the lux gene operon construct, mice were fed with various amounts of attenuated S. typhimurium-lux to monitor in vivo clearance over a period of 24 h. We found that the ingested attenuated S. typhimurium-lux cells were almost cleared out 9 h postfeeding, as judged by a significant decrease in bioluminescence. We further examined the therapeutic efficacy of vaccination using attenuated S. typhimurium carrying the mouse alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) gene against a cancer line CT26-murine alpha-feto protein (mAFP) that stably expresses AFP and mouse hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) Hepa1-6. Attenuated S. typhimurium oral DNA vaccine was found to promote protective immunity against both CT26-mAFP and Hepa1-6 tumor cells growth. The oral DNA vaccine significantly increased the life span of tumor-challenged mice in both tumor models. Together, these results suggest that vaccination with the attenuated S. typhimurium oral DNA vaccine that carries the AFP gene could be a promising strategy to prevent HCC development.

Published 19 July 2006 in Cancer Gene Ther, 13(8): 746-52.
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