PMID: 11901764Mar 21, 2002Paper

Genetic modification of dendritic cells and its application for cancer immunotherapy

The Journal of Medical Investigation : JMI
Yasuhiko NishiokaS Sone

Abstract

Dendritic cells (DCs) are the most potent antigen-presenting cells (APCs). DCs pulsed with peptides of tumor-associated antigens (TAA) and tumor lysate have been used in cancer immunotherapy. An early clinical study demonstrated the safety of the use of DCs, but the clinical response was not sufficient. The gene-modification of DCs with TAA and soluble factor genes such as cytokine and chemokine genes has been examined to enhance the antigen-presenting capacity of DCs. Viral vectors including retroviruses and adenoviruses have been reported to be useful to obtain a sufficient transduction efficiency into DCs. TAA gene-transduced DCs could have several advantages compared with TAA peptide-pulsed DCs as follows: 1) The use of TAA gene-modified DCs are not restricted by MHC haplotypes. 2) The gene transduction with TAA genes is likely to present the unknown TAA peptides on DCs. 3) The gene-modified DCs show the prolonged presentation of TAA peptides. The transduction of DCs with cytokine genes including IL-12 and GM-CSF have also been reported to argument the antitumor effects of DCs. Although the results in the experimental systems were promising, the clinical application of gene-modified DCs includes several problems such as the...Continue Reading

Related Concepts

Related Feeds

Cancer Biology: Molecular Imaging

Molecular imaging enables noninvasive imaging of key molecules that are crucial to tumor biology. Discover the latest research in molecular imaging in cancer biology in this feed.

Cancer Vaccines

Cancer vaccines are vaccines that either treat existing cancer or prevent development of a cancer.