IgG Responses to Tissue-Associated Antigens as Biomarkers of Immunological Treatment Efficacy

Abstract EN

We previously demonstrated that IgG responses to a panel of 126 prostate tissue-associated antigens are common in patients with prostate cancer.

In the current report we questioned whether changes in IgG responses to this panel might be used as a measure of immune response, and potentially antigen spread, following prostate cancer-directed immune-active therapies.

Sera were obtained from prostate cancer patients prior to and three months following treatment with androgen deprivation therapy (n=34), a poxviral vaccine (n=31), and a DNA vaccine (n=21).

Changes in IgG responses to individual antigens were identified by phage immunoblot.

Patterns of IgG recognition following three months of treatment were evaluated using a machine-learned Bayesian Belief Network (ML-BBN).

We found that different antigens were recognized following androgen deprivation compared with vaccine therapies.

While the number of clinical responders was low in the vaccine-treated populations, we demonstrate that ML-BBN can be used to develop potentially predictive models.