PMID: 11309297Apr 20, 2001Paper

Human dendritic cells transfected with renal tumor RNA stimulate polyclonal T-cell responses against antigens expressed by primary and metastatic tumors

Cancer Research
Axel HeiserJohannes Vieweg

Abstract

Although renal cell carcinoma has been shown to respond to immunotherapy, renal cell carcinoma-specific rejection antigens and their corresponding CTL epitopes have rarely been described. The use of dendritic cells (DCs) transfected with mRNA isolated from tumor cells may allow specific immunotherapy even in cancers for which potent rejection antigens have not been identified. Here we show that DCs transfected with RNA isolated from renal cancer tissue are remarkably effective in stimulating tumor-specific T-cell response in vitro but do not cross-react with normal tissue antigens including antigens expressed by renal parenchyma. In contrast, the tumor-specific CTLs lysed allogeneic tumor but not allogeneic normal tissue targets, suggesting the presence of shared albeit unidentified antigens among renal carcinomas. CTL responses against telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) accounted in part for the reactivities against allogeneic tumors because renal tumor RNA-transfected DCs stimulated polyclonal CTL responses, which encompassed as a subcomponent a response against TERT. Nonetheless, the tumor-specific CTLs were consistently superior to the CTLs stimulated with TERT RNA-transfected DCs in recognizing and lysing tumor target...Continue Reading

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