P16 Specific IFN-gamma Secreting T Cells in Tumor Infiltrating Populations of Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia (CIN) and Cervical Cancer

Infection by human papillomavirus (HPV) is a necessary event in development of cervical cancer. More than 18 different so called high-risk (hr) HPV types cause immortalization of cervical epithelial cells. In response to the action of the viral oncogene E7 a regulatory feed back loop leads to upregulation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p16INK4a. In turn, p16 INK4a is consistently over expressed in hr-HPV infected cells and is a tumor associated self antigen. Therefore, it represents a generic target antigen independently of the HPV type. We have investigated whether such strong over expression elicits…