'The bloke with a stroke' - Alick Wickham, the 'crawl' and social memory

Solomon Islander swimmer Alick Wickham is a celebrated figure in Australian, Solomon Islander and international sport history. His iconic status is inextricably linked to the myth that he introduced the crawl stroke, commonly known as freestyle, to Australia and hence the wider world. The focus of this paper is not the mythic qualities of Wickham's contribution to the crawl stroke, but rather how this myth has been enmeshed in a range of discourses. Through the lens of postcolonialism and by focusing on the creation of social memory - in literature, postage stamps and documentaries Wickham's contribution to the crawl stroke has been represented in three dominant ways: as a racial discourse centring on the social construction of the 'nimble savage', as part of Australian nationalism in terms of the nation's contribution to world swimming, and as a discernible dimension in the construction of Solomon Islander identity after independence.

A polytope DNA vaccine elicits multiple effector and memory CTL responses and protects against human papillomavirus 16 E7-expressing tumour

Vaccine-induced CD8 T cells directed to tumourspecific antigens are recognised as important components of protective and therapeutic immunity against tumours. Where tumour antigens have pathogenic potential or where immunogenic epitopes are lost from tumours, development of subunit vaccines consisting of multiple individual epitopes is an attractive alternative to immunising with whole tumour antigen. In the present study we investigate the efficacy of two DNA-based multiepitope('polytope') vaccines containing murine (H-2(b)) and human (HLA-A* 0201)-restricted epitopes of the E7 oncoprotein of human papillomavirus type 16, in eliciting tumour-protective cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) responses. We show that the first of these polytopes elicited powerful effector CTL responses ( measured by IFN-gamma ELISpot) and long-lived memory CTL responses ( measured by functional CTL assay and tetramers) in immunised mice. The responses could be boosted by immunisation with a recombinant vaccinia virus expressing the polytope. Responses induced by immunisation with polytope DNA alone partially protected against infection with recombinant vaccinia virus expressing the polytope. Complete protection was afforded against challenge with an E7-expressing tumour, and reduced growth of nascent tumours was observed. A second polytope differing in the exact composition and order of CTL epitopes, and lacking an inserted endoplasmic reticulum targeting sequence and T-helper epitope, induced much poorer CTL responses and failed to protect against tumour challenge. These observations indicate the validity of a DNA polytope vaccine approach to human papillomavirus E7 - associated carcinoma, and underscore the importance of design in polytope vaccine construction.