Cancer Stem Cell based adjuvant for oncoantingen-driven vaccination

The aim of this work is the identification of adjuvant molecules that can be associated to an oncoantigen-driven vaccination. By microarray analysis and data mining we have identified a set of drugs targeting genes that are associated to breast cancer stem cells (CSC): Atorvastatin, Bumetanide, Radafaxine, ICA 17043, YSL. In vitro characterization of one of these drugs, Atorvastatin. showed its ability to impair mammosphere formation, which is a peculiarity of normal and cancer stem cells. A mathematical model to simulate the effect of the combination of adjuvant and vaccination was designed and parameters defined on the basis of ErbB2-driven vaccination and Atorvastatin activity on CSC. The model suggests that reduction and halting of tumor mass increment can be reached by combining the effect of ErbB2 vaccination and 5 uM Atorvastatin as adjuvant.