Dendritic cell-based vaccine research against cancer

Abstract

Therapeutic vaccines that treat cancers with the help of the patient's own immune system signify a feasible option for active immunotherapy against the disease. Dendritic cells (DCs) play a central role in modulating the immune response and thus can be wisely utilized as an immunotherapeutic strategy for cancer regimens. Advances in the knowledge of DC biology and function have led to the development of DC-based vaccines for cancer therapy. In the present review, we discuss the biology and function of DCs, their subsets and receptors, antigen loading and route of administration of DC vaccines, as well as active and passive targeting strategies for treating the cancer. We also discuss the preclinical and clinical status of these newly developed vaccines. Special attention should be given by the scientific community to the challenges that need to be solved for the successful implication of these vaccines in cancer therapy.

Dendritic Cells as Pharmacological Tools for Cancer Immunotherapy

“…The taxonomy of the DC system is complex and will be only briefly discussed here. The reader is directed to MacDonald et al (2002), Ziegler-Heitbrock et al (2010), Collin et al (2013), Merad et al (2013), Cohn and Delamarre (2014), and Mody et al (2015), for a comprehensive review of the DC nomenclature. The human DC family consists of several distinct subsets, which differ from each other with respect to their localization, cell-surface phenotype, and functional specialization (Collin et al, 2013).…”

“…The human DC family consists of several distinct subsets, which differ from each other with respect to their localization, cell-surface phenotype, and functional specialization (Collin et al, 2013). For example, the human skin hosts two main types of DCs: epidermal Langerhans cells (LCs) and dermal DCs (Mody et al, 2015). Langerhans cells are characterized by expression of the cell-surface markers CD1a and CD207/Langerin and are functionally endowed with a potent CTLstimulatory activity, especially when compared with CD14 + dermal DCs (Ueno et al, 2010;Banchereau et al, 2012).…”

“…These topics have been excellently reviewed by others (Caminschi et al, 2012;Eggermont et al, 2014;Mody et al, 2015) and will not be covered in this review.…”

Influence of autologous dendritic cells on cytokine-induced killer cell proliferation, cell phenotype and antitumor activity in vitro

“…Clinical studies have demonstrated that specifically designed DC-targeted cancer cell vaccines have different clinical benefits (8)(9)(10). Frank et al demonstrated that patients who received dendritic cell vaccines generated by the adherence method demonstrated increased T cell proliferation in response to the vaccination (11).…”

Isolation of dendritic cells from umbilical cord blood using magnetic activated cell sorting or adherence

“…However, DCs are usually present in extremely small numbers in the circulation, and exhibit marked diversity. There are a number of previous studies that have described methods for culturing DCs in vitro (4)(5)(6). The cells can be generated from various cellular sources, including bone marrow, umbilical cord blood and peripheral blood.…”