Identification of human antitumor cytotoxic T lymphocytes epitopes of recoverin, a cancer-associated retinopathy antigen, possibly related with a better prognosis in a paraneoplastic syndrome

Abstract

Cancer-associated retinopathy (CAR) is a rare paraneoplastic syndrome, and the recoverin-specific autoantibody is suggested to contribute to the pathogenesis of retinopathy, including apoptosis of retinal cells. Because it is known that CAR+ cancer patients have a preferable prognosis, we hypothesized that aberrantly expressed recoverin in cancer cells can become a target of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). Here we tested nine recoverin-derived HLA-A24-binding peptides for their capacity to elicit antitumor CTL. We observed recoverin-specific CTL responses in two HLA-A24+ CAR+ cancer patients. In addition, the CTL responses were obtained from three of ten CAR– cancer patients and two of six healthy individuals. The CTL precursor frequency of CAR+ cancer patients and that of CAR– cancer patients was higher than that of healthy individuals. Of nine recoverin peptides, R49 (QFQSIYAKF), R49.2 (QFQSIYAKFF), and R64 (AYAQHVFRSF) were discovered to induce the peptide-specific CTL. Taken together, our present data suggest that peripheral activation of recoverin-specific antitumor CTL is likely to contribute to the preferable prognosis of CAR+ cancer patients. Moreover, in cases other than CAR+ cancer patients, recoverin may offer the opportunity to design epitope-based immunotherapeutic approaches for treating HLA-A24+ cancer patients with a recoverin-expressing tumor.