1. ¹Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA
2. ²Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA
3. ³Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA
4. ⁴Department of Oncology, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA

Correspondence: Dr C-F Hung, Department of Pathology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, CRB II Room 307, 1550 Orleans Street, Baltimore, MD 21231, USA. E-mail: chung2@jhmi.edu

Received 28 July 2006; Revised 9 November 2006; Accepted 27 November 2006; Published online 22 March 2007.

Abstract

Cancer immunotherapy targeting mesothelin represents a potentially plausible approach for the control of ovarian cancer as most ovarian cancers express high levels of mesothelin. In the current study, we created a mesothelin-positive luciferase-expressing ovarian cancer model, MOSEC/luc. This luciferase-expressing tumor model allowed us to quantitate tumor distribution and tumor load in tumor-challenged mice using a non-invasive bioluminescence imaging system. In addition, we identified an H-2D^b-restricted mesothelin peptide-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) epitope (amino acid (aa) 406–414) that was endogenously processed and presented by MOSEC/luc tumor cells. We showed that adoptive transfer of mesothelin peptide (aa406–414)-specific CD8⁺ T cells led to the control of MOSEC/luc tumor cells. The MOSEC/luc tumor model and the newly identified H-2D^b-restricted murine mesothelin-specific CTL epitope (aa406–414) will be very useful for the development of immunotherapy for ovarian cancer as well as for the development of quantitative CD8⁺ T cell-mediated immunological assays.