Dendritic cell therapy for oncology roundtable conference

2-3 September 2010, Brussels, BelgiumThe Dendritic Cell Therapy for Oncology Roundtable Conference was organized by Reliable Cancer Therapies and moderated by Prof. Dr. Steven De Vleeschouwer. The organizer, Reliable Cancer Therapies, is a Swiss non-profit organization that provides information on evidence-based cancer treatments and funding for the development of a selection of promising cancer therapies. In order to be able to give valuable information about dendritic cell (DC) therapy to patients and physicians, the organizing committee felt it necessary to organize this conference to get an up-to-date status of the academic DC therapy field, collect ideas to guide patients towards clinical trials and to induce cross-fertilization for protocol optimization. In total, 31 experts participated to an in-depth discussion about the status and the future development path for dendritic cell vaccines. The conference started with general presentations about cancer immunotherapy, followed by comprehensive overview presentations about the progress in DC vaccine development achieved by each speaker. At the end of the meeting, a thorough general discussion focused on key questions about what is needed to improve DC vaccines. This report does not cover all presentations, but aims to highlight selected points of interest, particularly relating to possible limitations and potential approaches to improvement of DC therapies specifically, and also immunotherapeutic interventions in general terms.