Vaccination against tumors with TAAs

[bzguy]

TAAs are proteins which are associated with a certain type of malignancy

 

If we give a person a vaccine made of a peptide from a TAA, and it's immunogenic enough, it will activate T cells against this epitope, and we will get activation to CTLs which will kill the tumor cells (which express TAAs).

 

My question is - how do the T cells know to discriminate between self and non self?

The TAAs are basically proteins which are expressed in different quantites or in some minor changes in tumor cells compared to normal cells - but is this enough to make sure we don't get an autoimmune response?

 

Thank you!@