Published in

MDPI, Cancers, 6(12), p. 1687, 2020

DOI: 10.3390/cancers12061687

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Telomerase and CD4 T Cell Immunity in Cancer

Journal article published in 2020 by Magalie Dosset ORCID, Andrea Castro ORCID, Hannah Carter, Maurizio Zanetti
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) is a conserved self-tumor antigen which is overexpressed in most tumors and plays a critical role in tumor formation and progression. As such, TERT is an antigen of great relevance to develop widely applicable immunotherapies. CD4 T cells play a major role in the anti-cancer response alone or with other effector cells such as CD8 T cells and NK cells. To date, efforts have been made to identify TERT peptides capable of stimulating CD4 T cells that are also able to bind diverse MHC-II alleles to ease immune status monitoring and immunotherapies. Here, we review the current status of TERT biology, TERT/MHC-II immunobiology, and past and current vaccine clinical trials. We propose that monitoring CD4 T cell immunity against TERT is a simple and direct way to assess immune surveillance in cancer patients and a new way to predict the response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICPi). Finally, we present the initial results of a systematic discovery of TERT peptides able to bind the most common HLA Class II alleles worldwide and show that the repertoire of MHC-II TERT peptides is wider than currently appreciated.