Lentiviruses in Cancer Immunotherapy

Abstract

Lentiviral vectors have emerged as promising tools for cancer immunotherapy owing to their capacity to transduce a wide range of different cell types, including dendritic cells (DCs), the key regulators of immunity. Ex vivo transduced DCs proved to be potent inducers of strong antigen-specific T-cell responses, both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, lentiviral vectors have been successfully applied for antigen-specific immunization, offering the advantage that the same lentivirus can be used for all patients resulting in an ‘off-the-shelf‘ therapeutic. This review provides an update on the state-of-the-art induction of tumor-specific immune responses in vivo upon direct administration of tumor-associated antigen-encoding lentiviruses. Focusing on the cell types transduced, the results of current studies and the explanation for the potency of lentiviral vectors are discussed.

Keywords: :

• antigen-presenting cell
• cancer
• cytotoxic T cell
• dendritic cell
• immunotherapy
• lentivirus

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no 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. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

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