Abstract: A safe and efficacious method of inducing protective immunity in animals against TAP-1 deficient metastatic melanoma is disclosed. The method involves treating the animals with relatively small amounts of a recombinant non-replicating adenovirus encoding human TAP-1 to promote and maintain long term anti-tumor survival, and enhanced memory T-cell subpopulations, even when the treatment effects only a small fraction of metastatic tumor cells.

Abstract: The invention provides processes and compositions for enhancing the immunogenicity of TAP-1 expression-deficient cells by increasing the presentation of MHC Class I surface molecules for detection by cytotoxic T-lymphocyte cells through increased TAP-1 expression, which comprises administering to the TAP-1 expression-deficient cells a TAP-1 expression increasing amount of a bio-acceptable substance that promotes transcription of TAP-1 gene in the cells to cause enhanced MHC Class I surface expression of the cells. The bio-acceptable substance may be a histone H3 deacetylase inhibitor, such as trichostatin A, a transcriptional co-activator having intrinsic histone acetyl transferase activity or a histone acetyl transferase comprising at least one member of the CBP/p300 protein family. The process and compositions increase the immunogenicity of the target cells to enhance their destruction by cytotoxic lymphocytes.