Personalized Dendritic Cell-Based Tumor Immunotherapy

Abstract

Advances in the understanding of the immunoregulatory functions of dendritic cells (DCs) in animal models and humans have led to their exploitation as anticancer vaccines. Although DC-based immunotherapy has proven clinically safe and efficient to induce tumor-specific immune responses, only a limited number of objective clinical responses have been reported in cancer patients. These relatively disappointing results have prompted the evaluation of multiple approaches to improve the efficacy of DC vaccines. The topic of this review focuses on personalized DC-based anticancer vaccines, which in theory have the potential to present to the host immune system the entire repertoire of antigens harbored by autologous tumor cells. We also discuss the implementation of these vaccines in cancer therapeutic strategies, their limitations and the future challenges for effective immunotherapy against cancer.

KEYWORDS::

• anticancer immune response
• chaperone protein
• dendritic cell
• idiotype
• personalized tumor vaccine
• tumor lysate

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Emmanuel Katsanis and Nicolas Larmonier are supported by NIH grant R01 CA104926, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Fellow Award 5188–5107 (Nicolas Larmonier), The Alex‘s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer (Nicolas Larmonier), the Tee Up for Tots and Raise a Racquet for Kids Funds (Emmanuel Katsanis and Nicolas Larmonier). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

Emmanuel Katsanis and Nicolas Larmonier are supported by NIH grant R01 CA104926, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Fellow Award 5188–5107 (Nicolas Larmonier), The Alex‘s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer (Nicolas Larmonier), the Tee Up for Tots and Raise a Racquet for Kids Funds (Emmanuel Katsanis and Nicolas Larmonier). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.