Development of an IL-21 enhanced MYCN-DNA vaccine for anti-neuroblastoma immunotherapy

Introduction: MYCN amplification and subsequent overexpression is associated with an aggressive and chemotherapy-resistant neuroblastoma (NB) phenotype. The presence of MYCN specific T-cells in patients with neuroblastoma indicate that MYCN is a promising target for active immunity approaches and Interleukin 21 (IL-21) is an attractive adjuvant for a DNA vaccine with regard to its ability to induce cytotoxic T cell proliferation. Methods/Results: cDNA of murine IL-21 was cloned from murine splenocytes. The murine MYCN- cDNA was previously described. We also designed two minigenes encoding for MYCN-derived MHC-I…