Macrophage colony-stimulating factor, a multi-functional cytokine, plays important roles in the proliferation and differentiation of mononuclearphagocyte lineage, pregnancy, fertility and bone metablization. Due to alternative splicing of M-CSF transcripts, M-CSF can exit in at least three isoforms: soluble M-CSF (s-M-CSF), membrane-bound M-CSF and extracellular matrix-bound M-CSF (PG-M-CSF). M-CSF receptor (M-CSFR) encoded by the c-fms proto-oncogene, is an important member of the receptor tyrosine kinase family. It has been established that the aberrant expression or mutation of m-M-CSF or M-CSFR is implicated in the pathogenesis of several solid tumors as well as hematopoietic diseases. Moreover, co-expression of m-M-CSF and M-CSFR indicates high malignancy and poor prognosis. Our previous work has shown that m-M-CSF (MAFJ6-1) and M-CSFR (MAFJ6-1R) were highly co-expressed in human leukemic cell line J6-1, from which we have successfully cloned cDNA of MAFJ6-1 and MAFJ6-1R. It is identified that there are missense mutations in the open reading frames of both MAFJ6-1 and MAFJ6-1R cDNA. These phenomena implicated that the aberrant expression and mutation of m-M-CSF and M-CSFR is closely related to tumorigenesis, and that they might be the potential targets for the immunotherapy of tumors.DNA immunization is a novel vaccine technology, which was established in 1990s. Previously, we targeted the c-fms proto-oncogene for the immunotherapy of tumors and constructed M-CSFR DNA vaccine. It was demonstrated that this vaccine markedly prolonged the survival of mice with established tumors, and partly protected the immunized BALB/c mice against tumor cells challenge. In order to elucidate the possible application of m-M-CSF and M-CSFR DNA vaccines for tumor immunotherapy, explore the possible discrepancy of immune responses induced by...
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