Immune responses to stress proteins: Applications to infectious disease and cancer |
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Authors: | Lee Mizzen |
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Institution: | (1) StressGen Biotechnologies Corporation, 350-4243 Glanford Avenue, V8Z 4B9 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
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Abstract: | Heat shock proteins, or stress proteins have been identified as part of a highly conserved cellular defence mechanism mediated
by multiple, distinct gene familes and corresponding gene products. As intracellular chaperones, stress proteins participate
in many essential biochemical pathways of protein maturation and function active during times of stress and during normal
cellular homeostasis. In addition to their well-characterized role as protein chaperones, stress proteins are now realized
to possess another important biological property: immunogenicity. Stress proteins are now understood to play a fundamental
role in immune surveillance of infection and malignancy and this body of basic research has provided a framework for their
clinical application. As key targets of both humoral and cellular immunity during infection, stress proteins have accordingly
received considerable research interest as prophylactic vaccines for infectious disease applications. The unique and potent
immunostimulatory properties of stress proteins have similarly been applied to the development of new approaches to cancer
therapy, including both protein and gene-based modalities. |
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Keywords: | cancer immunity infectious disease stress proteins vaccines |
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