| abstract |
A peptide characterized in that a) is at least 8 amino acids long and is a fragment of a mutant protein that is produced from a reading frame shift mutation in a BAX gene of a cancer cell in which said shift mutation The reading frame occurs in the G8 repeat in the third exon that crosses codons 38-41 of the unmutated BAX gene; and b) consists of at least one amino acid from the mutant part of a protein sequence encoded by said gene; and c) comprises 0-10 amino acids from the carboxyl terminus of the normal part of the protein sequence preceding the amino terminus of the mutant sequence and optionally extends to the carboxyl terminus of the mutant portion of the protein as determined by a new codon. termination generated by the mutation with displacement of the reading frame; and d) induces, both in its full length and after processing by the antigen-presenting cell, T lymphocyte responses, for use in a procedure for vaccination of a person predisposed to, or affected with, cancer, which consists of administering to the minus one of said peptide (s), one or more times, in an amount sufficient for the induction of immunity of specific T lymphocytes for the mutant proteins, or fragments thereof, encoded by the BAX gene mutated by displacement of the frameshift. |