Unmethylated oligodeoxynucleotides containing guanine-cytidine dimers (CpG ODN) have been described as potent inducers of selected antitumour immune responses and the immunotherapeutic efficacy of CpG ODN has been examined either alone or as a vaccine adjuvant. We hypothesized that CpG ODN therapy could be an effective tool for immunotherapy of not only conventional MHC class I 1 tumours but also of those tumours that have lost MHC class I expression during their progression. To address this hypothesis, we employed the animal model resembling MHC class I-proficient and -deficient human papilloma virus (HPV) 16-associated tumours. A cell line transformed with HPV16 E6 and E7 oncogenes, TC-1, as a prototype of MHC class I-positive line, and its MHC class I-deficient sublines TC-1/A9 and TC-1/P3C10 were injected into syngeneic C57BL/6 mice and the growing tumours were subjected to immunotherapy with CpG ODN 1826. The therapy started either 1 day after the challenge with the tumour cells or later, when the tumours had reached a palpable size. In both settings, CpG ODN 1826 significantly reduced the growth of MHC class I-proficient and -deficient tumours. Furthermore, we demonstrated that CpG ODN 1585, whose mechanism of action preferably involves indirect activation of the natural killer cells, induced regression of the MHC class I-deficient tumours TC1/A9 but not of the MHC class I-proficient tumours TC-1. This study infers that synthetic CpG ODN have a potential for the therapy of both MHC class I-proficient and -deficient tumours and thus could be also used against tumours that tend to down-regulate their MHC class I expression. ' 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Key words: HPV16; immunotherapy; CpG oligodeoxynucleotides; MHC class I restriction One of the most important and frequent events in the course of the tumour development is a partial or total loss of the MHC class I expression on the tumour cells. [1][2][3] This loss represents an obstacle in the development of efficient immunotherapy of tumours as well as possible explanation for failures of some experimental antitumour immunotherapies based on induction of the Tcell-mediated cytotoxic immune response in clinical trials. Therefore, there is a need for immunotherapeutic protocols that would also be effective for MHC class I-negative tumours. 4,5 Unmethylated oligodeoxynucleotides harboring guanine-cytidine dimers (CpG ODN) that mimic the bacterial DNA are good candidates for such therapeutic agents, since they have been described as potent inducers of the innate and adaptive immune responses, providing the missing ''danger signal'' through the Toll-like receptor 9 (TLR 9) involving pathway. 6 In tumour immunology, CpG ODN have been used in a number of animal studies as adjuvants in experimental vaccinations 7-10 for ex vivo preparation of cellular vaccines as they induce maturation of dendritic cells [11][12][13] and for the therapy of the residual disease after chemotherapy or tumour resection. 14 Moreover, repeated direct intratumoral administration of CpG ODN si...