Dendritic cells (DCs) are highly efficient antigen-presenting cells capable of priming both cytotoxic and helper T cells in vivo. Recent studies have demonstrated the potential use of DCs that are modified to carry tumor-specific antigens in cancer vaccines. However, the optimal administration route of DC-based vaccines to generate the greatest anti-tumor effect remains to be determined. This study is aimed at comparing the levels of immune responses and anti-tumor effect generated through different administration routes of DCbased vaccination. We chose the E7 gene product of human papillomavirus (HPV) as the model antigen and generated a stable DC line (designated as DC-E7) that constitutively

Antigen-specific cancer immunotherapy involves the delivery of tumor-associated antigen to the host for the generation of tumor-specific immune responses and antitumor effects. We hypothesized that different delivery systems may influence the pattern of antigen-specific immune response and the outcome of antitumor effect. We therefore evaluated recombinant vaccinia virus and naked DNA for the generation of antigen-specific immune responses and antitumor effects. We previously found that recombinant vaccinia and naked DNA vaccines containing the chimeric Sig/E7/LAMP-1 gene were capable of controlling the growth of HPV-16 E7-expressing tumor cells (TC-1). In this study, we performed a head-to-head comparison of optimized delivery of Sig/E7/LAMP-1 vaccinia and DNA vaccines using doseescalating tumor challenge. At a dose of 1 × 10 6 TC-1 cells per mouse, Sig/E7/LAMP-1 DNA provided 100% protection against subcutaneous growth of tumors, while VacSig/E7/LAMP-1 protected only 40% of the mice. Furthermore, Sig/E7/LAMP-1 DNA vaccines are capable of protect-

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