DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION As noted above, the present invention is generally directed to compositions and methods for the immunotherapy of prostate cancer.
The inventive compositions are generally polypeptides that comprise at least a portion of a prostate tumor protein.
Also included within the present invention are molecules (such as an antibody or fragment thereof) that bind to the inventive polypeptides.
Such molecules are referred to herein as "binding agents.
" In particular, the subject invention discloses polypeptides comprising at least a portion of a human prostate tumor protein, or a variant of such a protein that differs only in conservative substitutions and/or modifications, wherein the prostate tumor protein includes an amino acid sequence encoded by a DNA molecule having a sequence selected from the group consisting of nucleotide sequences recited in SEQ ID NO: 2, 3, 8-29, 41-45, 47-52, 54-65, 70, 73-74, 79, 81, 87, 90, 92, 93, 97, 103, 104, 107, 109-111, 115-160, 181, 188, 191, 193, 194, 198, 203, 204, and 207-224, the complements of said nucleotide sequences and variants thereof.
As used herein, the term "polypeptide" encompasses amino acid chains of any length, including full length proteins, wherein the amino acid residues are linked by covalent peptide bonds.
Thus, a polypeptide comprising a portion of one of the above prostate proteins may consist entirely of the portion, or the portion may be present within a larger polypeptide that contains additional sequences.
The additional sequences may be derived from the native protein or may be heterologous, and such sequences may be immunoreactive and/or antigenic.
As used herein, an "immunogenic portion" of a human prostate tumor protein is a portion that is capable of eliciting an immune response in a patient inflicted with prostate cancer and as such binds to antibodies present within sera from a prostate cancer patient.
Immunogenic portions of the proteins described herein may thus be identified in antibody binding assays
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