Development of Hepatitis B surface antigen as a generic vector for the delivery of foreign CTL epitopes.

Funding Activity

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Funded Activity Summary

Many kinds of cancer and infections display unique proteins which the body's immune system can recognise as ' foreign', and mount an immune response which, if correctly harnessed, will kill the cancer or infected cells . A way to harness the immune response is to vaccinate with these unique proteins. However, new ways need to be found to deliver the unique proteins to produce the maximal possible anti- cancer or pathogen response, and one that is long lived. In particular one needs to stimulate the cellular arm of the immune response to produce killer cells named CTLs which specifically kill cancer or infected cells. In this project we plan to use an already-licensed human vaccine - the Hepatitis B surface antigen vaccine , or HBsAG, - and genetically modify it to contain important regions of cancer or pathogen proteins termed 'epitopes'. We surmise that immunisation with these modified HBsAg will elicit powerful CTL responses which will killer cancer or infected cells.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2006

End Date: 01-01-2008

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $439,642.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Cellular Immunology

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

DNA and VLP Vaccine | hepatitis B | hepatitis B surface antigen | immunity-cellular | immunotherapy | vaccine development | vaccine vectors | virology | virus-like particle