PHARMACEUTICAL INGREDIENT FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT AND PREVENTING OF CANCER

摘要

Pharmaceutic ingredient for medical treatment and prevention of cancer in this invention is consist of tumor cell extract as antigens and materials which can stimulate NKT cells at the time of antigen presentation to boost co-stimulatory molecule expression in the antigen presenting cells. The active vaccine successfully protected mice received live tumor cells two weeks after vaccine immunization. It also could enhance the survival of mice, which received live tumor cells before vaccine immunization. The effect of cancer vaccine is absolutely dependent of NKT cells since any vaccine mediated protective effect was not observed in CD1d deficient mice, which do not have NKT cells. Enhanced cytotoxic effect by the conventional CD4+ or CD8+ memory T cells seem major contributor for the rejection of newly injected or already established tumors. NKT cells do not directly involved in the cytotoxicity to kill the tumor cells but enhance the development tumor specific memory T cells.