Developing a novel vaccine therapy targeting cancer stem cells

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24659592
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: General surgery
• Research Institution: Sapporo Medical University
• Principal Investigator: HIRATA Koichi 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (50136959)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): SATO Noriyuki 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (50158937) ; TORIGOE Toshihiko 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 准教授 (20301400) ; TAMURA Yasuaki 北海道大学, 先端生命科学研究院, 特任教授 (80322329) ; HIROHASHI Yoshihiko 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 助教 (30516901) ; MIZUGUCHI Toru 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 准教授 (30347174) ; KIMURA Yasutoshi 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 准教授 (80311893) ; KUTOMI Goro 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 講師 (10404625) ; OGAWA Tadashi 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 研究員 (70516658) ; KOUNO Tsuyoshi 札幌医科大学, 医学部, 研究員 (50516664)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 癌 / 膵 / 免疫 / 幹細胞 / side population

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Pancreatic cancer is known as high mortality disease compared with other cancers due to higher drug resistance and invasive and metastatic potentials. We started to research for developing new treatments that kill pancreatic CSCs selectively by immunological approaches such as cancer vaccines. In past we reported that we identified a CSC specific gene OR7C1 from colorectal cancers, so we thought OR7C1 may be a CSC specific gene in pancreatic cancer, too.
At first, we isolated pancreatic CSCs by sphere culture method and analyze expression levels. Sphere culture cell showed predominantly higher expression of OR7C1 and this suggested that OR7C1 may be a good target for CSC specific therapy. Next, we isolated OR7C1 high expression (OR7C1high) cells by flowcytometry and try to analyze about stemness. But analyses did not work well because we could not expand OR7C1high cells due to cell death and finally we could not identify CSC specific peptides in 3 years.

Free Research Field

消化器外科