Dendritic/tumor fusion cell-based vaccination against cancer

A promising area of investigation is the use of cancer vaccines to eliminate residual tumor cells. Dendritic cells (DCs) are potent professional antigen-presenting cells able to induce primary immune responses. DCs capture and process antigens into peptides and present them to T cells and B cells through MHC class I and II molecules. An alternative approach to the induction of antitumor immunity is the use of fusions of DCs and tumor cells. In this approach, a broad spectrum of tumor-associated antigens, including those known and unidentified, are processed endogenously and presented by MHC class I and II pathways in the context of costimulatory signals. In animal studies, vaccination with DC/tumor fusion cells results in the elimination of established lung metastasis. Preclinical human studies have demonstrated that DC/tumor fusion cells induce antigen-specific polyclonal cytotoxic T-lymphocyte responses against autologous tumor in vitro. In clinical studies, vaccination of cancer patients with autologous DC/tumor fusion cells is associated with immunological and clinical responses in a subset of patients. Future studies should be investigated to improve the immunogenicity of DC/tumor fusion cell preparations. This review provides a general overview of the DC/tumor fusion cell-based vaccine and summarizes some of the recent advances in this field.