Priming of immune responses against transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP)-deficient tumours: tumour direct priming.

We previously showed that introduction of transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) 1 into TAP-negative CMT.64, a major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) down-regulated mouse lung carcinoma cell line, enhanced T-cell immunity against TAP-deficient tumour cells. Here, we have addressed two questions: (1) whether such immunity can be further augmented by co-expression of TAP1 with B7.1 or H-2K(b) genes, and (2) which T-cell priming mechanism (tumour direct priming or dendritic cell cross-priming) plays the major role in inducing an immune response against TAP-deficient tumours. We introduced the B7.1 or H-2K(b) gene into TAP1-expressing CMT.64 cells and determined which gene co-expressed with TAP1 was able to provide greater protective immunity against TAP-deficient tumour cells. Our results show that immunization of mice with B7.1 and TAP1 co-expressing but not H-2K(b) and TAP1 co-expressing CMT.64 cells dramatically augments T-cell-mediated immunity, as shown by an increase in survival of mice inoculated with live CMT.64 cells. In addition, our results suggest that induction of T-cell-mediated immunity against TAP-deficient tumour cells could be mainly through tumour direct priming rather than dendritic cell cross-priming as they show that T cells generated by tumour cell-lysate-loaded dendritic cells recognized TAP-deficient tumour cells much less than TAP-proficient tumour cells. These data suggest that direct priming by TAP1 and B7.1 co-expressing tumour cells is potentially a major mechanism to facilitate immune responses against TAP-deficient tumour cells.