Intradermal administration of DNA vaccines combining a strategy to bypass antigen processing with a strategy to prolong dendritic cell survival enhances DNA vaccine potency

Intradermal vaccination via gene gun efficiently delivers DNA vaccines into dendritic cells (DCs) of the skin, resulting in the activation and priming of antigen-specific T cells in vivo. We have previously demonstrated that intradermal delivery of DNA vaccines encoding single-chain trimer (SCT) composed of the most immunogenic epitope of human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) E6 protein (aa49-57), β2-microglobulin, and MHC class I heavy chain (SCT-E6) can bypass antigen processing and lead to stable cell-surface presentation of E6 peptides. We also showed that co-administration of DNA vaccines with DNA encoding anti-apoptotic proteins can prolong the survival of DNA-transduced DCs, resulting in significant enhancement of antigen-specific CD8⁺ T cell immune responses. In the current study, we hypothesized that combining the SCT strategy and antiapoptotic strategy may further enhance DNA vaccine potency by augmenting antigen-specific CD8⁺ T cell immune responses and antitumor effects in vaccinated mice. Here, we show that C57BL/6 mice vaccinated with SCT-E6 DNA combined with antiapoptotic protein Bcl-xL DNA generated enhanced E6-specific CD8⁺ T cell immune responses compared to mice vaccinated with SCT-E6 DNA and a non-functional mutant Bcl-xL (mtBcl-xL) DNA. Furthermore, we show that mice treated with SCT-E6 and Bcl-xL DNA generated enhanced anti-tumor effects against E6-expressing tumor cells (TC-1/Luciferase) compared to mice treated with SCT-E6 and mtBcl-xL DNA.