Development of therapeutic vaccines against ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer (OC) is a gynecological malignancy with high morbidity and mortality. There is an urgent need for other therapeutic approaches for ovarian cancer. In this study, we explored a promising protein antigen Sp17 for OC vaccine development. We investigated the role of Sp17 in tumorigenicity and chemoresistance and mapped the T cell and B cell epitopes within this protein to support the Sp17 peptide based vaccine development. We also investigated the vaccine formulation Sp17 peptides adjuvanted by nanoparticles. We found many new properties of immune responses can be induced by the nanovaccine formulation.