However, the sample size of patients analyzed in this study was relatively small and warrants cautious interpretation. We have previously shown that while naive NY-ESO-1–specific CD4+ T-cell precursors are present in wide range of healthy individuals and cancer patients, their activation is kept under stringent CD4+CD25+ Treg-cell control [20, 21, 28]. Using OK-432 as an adjuvant, we detected high-affinity NY-ESO-1–specific selleck inhibitor CD4+ T cells in effector/memory population after vaccination in two esophageal cancer patients. In Pt #1, we found two responses; spontaneous and vaccine-induced NY-ESO-1–specific CD4+ T cells. Both of them exhibited a similar efficiency to recognize titrated

Selleck Acalabrutinib peptide, indicating that these NY-ESO-1–specific CD4+ T cells had TCRs with similar affinity and were likely activated from naive high-affinity NY-ESO-1–specific CD4+ T-cell precursors. Vaccination with minimal peptide in incomplete Freund’s adjuvant fails to activate high-affinity NY-ESO-1–specific CD4+ T-cell precursors, rather it dominantly expands low-avidity effector/memory CD4+ T cells that cannot recognize naturally processed antigens [21]. In addition, following DNA vaccination covering the entire sequence of NY-ESO-1, high-avidity

NY-ESO-1–specific CD4+ T cells were not detected persistently because of rapid suppression by Treg cells [44]. While these data suggest a critical role for the inhibition of Treg-cell suppression by OK-432 ADP ribosylation factor in the activation of high-affinity NY-ESO-1–specific CD4+ T-cell precursors, it is still difficult to obtain

conclusive evidence without direct in vivo Treg-cell inhibition/depletion. To formally address this issue, clinical trials using Treg-cell depletion reagents and another clinical trial having two arms of patients receiving NY-ESO-1 with/without OK-432 would be required. Certain types of immunization methods or DC stimulations elicit/augment CD4+CD25+ Treg cells in vivo [10-12, 45]. As many tumor-associated antigens recognized by autologous tumor-reactive lymphocytes are antigenically normal self-constituents [1-3], they also could be recognized with CD4+CD25+ Treg cells. Given that a proportion of cancer/testis antigens are targets of Treg cells [46], it is necessary to avoid unwanted activation of cancer/testis antigen-specific CD4+CD25+ Treg cells. Though the sample size of patients analyzed in this study was small and warrants cautious interpretation, including OK-432 in vaccine components as an adjuvant would be a promising strategy to establish favorable circumstances for stimulating effector T cells by inhibiting Treg-cell activation. Furthermore, since this agent has a long history and is widely applied as an anticancer drug, particularly in Japan, its clinical safety profile has been already established.