LOW DOSE INOCULATION WITH TAP FOR ANTI-TUMOR IMMUNITY
A safe and efficacious method of inducing protective immunity in animals against TAP-1 deficient metastatic melanoma is disclosed. The method involves treating the animals with relatively small amounts of a recombinant non-replicating adenovirus encoding human TAP-1 to promote and maintain long term anti-tumor survival, and enhanced memory T-cell subpopulations, even when the treatment effects only a small fraction of metastatic tumor cells.
1 . A method of inducing protective immunity in animals against TAP-deficient metastatic melanoma by treating the animals with relatively small amounts of a recombinant non-replicating adenovirus encoding TAP-1.
2 . The method of claim 1 wherein the animal is a human.
3 . The method of claim 1 wherein the adenovirus only infects a small fraction of the metastatic tumor cells.
4 . The method of claim 1 wherein the amount of recombinant adenovirus used is in the range of from about 1×10 9 to 1×10 7 cells per inoculum.
5 . The method of claim 1 wherein the adenovirus encoding TAP-1 is part of a viral vector.
6 . The method of claim 1 wherein the viral vector is a VSV vector.