Rapid production of autologous tumor vaccines

DETAILED DESCRIPTION In accordance with the present invention an autologous vaccine to tumor cells is produced by transducing the tumor cells with a herpes simplex virus amplicon containing the gene for an immunostimulating protein to provide transient expression of the immunostimulating protein by the cells.
The tumor cells may be transduced with the herpes simplex amplicons ex vivo or in vivo.
Preferred immunostimulating protein used in the method of the invention include cytokines such as RANTES (a chemokine), interleukin-2 and GM-CSF, intracellular adhesion molecules such as ICAM-1, and costimulatory factors such as B7.
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A particularly important aspect of the present invention is the fact that tumor cells may be readily transduced with a combination of amplicons containing genes for two or more different immunostimulating proteins, for example interleukin-2 and interleukin 12 or RANTES and B7.
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This greatly facilitates the production of multiply-transdcued cells for multi-targeted therapy.