Purpose: The prognosis of platinum-based chemotherapyresistant metastatic urothelial cancer of the bladder remains poor. Personalized selection of the right peptides for each patient could be a novel approach for a cancer vaccine to boost anticancer immunity.Experimental Design: In this randomized, open-label, phase II study, patients ages !18 years with progressive bladder cancer after first-line platinum-based chemotherapy were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive personalized peptide vaccination (PPV) plus best supportive care (BSC) or BSC. PPV treatment used a maximum of four peptides chosen from 31 candidate peptides according to human leukocyte antigen types and peptide-reactive IgG titers, for 12 s.c. injections (8 injections, weekly; 4 injections, bi-weekly). The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS). Secondary endpoints were overall survival (OS), immune response, and toxicity.Results: Eighty patients were randomly assigned to receive either PPV plus BSC (n ¼ 39) or BSC (n ¼ 41). No significant improvement in PFS was noted [HR, 0.7; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.4-1.2, P ¼ 0.17]. For the secondary endpoints, PPV plus BSC significantly prolonged OS compared with BSC (HR, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.34-0.99, P ¼ 0.049), with median OS of 7.9 months (95% CI, 3.5-12.0) in the PPV plus BSC and 4.1 months (95% CI, 2.8-6.9) in the BSC. PPV treatment was well tolerated, without serious adverse drug reactions.Conclusions: PPV could not prolong PFS, but OS appeared to be improved with low toxicity and immune responses. Further large-scale, randomized trials are needed to confirm these results.
p63, a homologue of the p53 gene, is considered to be essential for the normal development of stratified epithelia including urothelium. To examine possible roles of p63 in urothelial tumorigenesis, p63 expression was systematically examined in normal urothelium, low-grade papillary noninvasive (LPN) urothelial tumours, and high-grade or invasive carcinomas, using either an isoformnonspecific or a DN-isoform-specific antibody. Expression profiles of p63 were also analysed in cultured cells. Immunoreactivity with the two antibodies was virtually identical in tissue samples examined. Basal and intermediate cell layers of normal urothelium showed intense nuclear p63 immunostaining. This normal staining pattern was preserved in a majority of LPN tumours, whereas it was frequently impaired in high-grade or muscle-invasive carcinomas. At the mRNA level, DNp63 expression predominated over TAp63, and amounts of DNp63 mRNA correlated with p63 immunoreactivity, confirming that DNp63 accounts for p63 expressed in urothelial tissues. In cultured cells, DNp63 was also expressed in low-grade tumour cells as well as normal urothelial cells, but undetectable in high-grade aggressive carcinoma cells. Interestingly, impaired DNp63 expression significantly associated with reduced b-catenin expression that was possibly related to progression of urothelial neoplasms. Thus, impaired DNp63 expression characterises aggressive phenotypes of urothelial neoplasms.
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