| Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in industrialized nations today. Cancer is caused by the uncontrolled growth of the progeny of a single transformed cell. Although treatments do exist, there is no established cure for long-term survival of most cancer patients. Many researchers are looking for a better way to treat or even cure cancer.; Tumors implement several different mechanisms to evade the host immune system. One of the most important mechanisms is to lack the expression of costimulatory molecules on their cell surface, such as B7.1 and CD40L, which are required to initiate a productive immune response. We hypothesize that B7.1 and CD40L costimulatory molecules can be used as efficient vaccines against tumors. The focus of this study is to clone the costimulatory molecules B7.1 and CD40L and express them in a high-yield insect expression system. These molecules will be used in future studies as soluble proteins or for expression on the surface of tumor cell lines to induce immune response and establish protective anti-tumor immunity. |
