A Tumor Mitochondria Vaccine Protects against Experimental Renal Cell Carcinoma

Mitochondria provide energy for cells via oxidative phosphorylation. Reactive oxygen species, a byproduct of this mitochondrial respiration, can damage mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and somatic mtDNA mutations have been found in all colorectal, ovarian, breast, urinary bladder, kidney, lung, and pancreatic tumors studied. The resulting altered mitochondrial proteins or tumor-associated mitochondrial Ags (TAMAs) are potentially immunogenic, suggesting that they may be targetable Ags for cancer immunotherapy. In this article, we show that the RENCA tumor cell line harbors TAMAs that can drive an antitumor immune response. We generated a cellular tumor vaccine by pulsing dendritic cells with enriched mitochondrial proteins from RENCA cells. Our dendritic cell-based RENCA mitochondrial lysate vaccine elicited a cytotoxic T cell response in vivo and conferred durable protection against challenge with RENCA cells when used in a prophylactic or therapeutic setting. By sequencing mtDNA from RENCA cells, we identified two mutated molecules: COX1 and ND5. Peptide vaccines generated from mitochondrial-encoded COX1 but not from ND5 had therapeutic properties similar to RENCA mitochondrial protein preparation. Thus, TAMAs can elicit effective antitumor immune responses, potentially providing a new immunotherapeutic strategy to treat cancer.