Vaccination of Patients With Advanced Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer With an Optimized Cryptic Human Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase Peptide

Purpose To evaluate the immunological and clinical response as well as the safety of the optimized peptide telomerase reverse transcriptase p572Y (TERT572Y) presented by HLA-A*0201 in patients with advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Patients and Methods Twenty-two patients with advanced NSCLC and residual (n 8) or progressive disease (PD; n 14) following chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy received two subcutaneous injections of the optimized TERT572Y peptide followed by four injections of the native TERT572 peptide administered every 3 weeks. Peptide-specific immune responses were monitored by enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot assay and/or TERT572Y pentamer staining.