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Updated: Jun 2, 2026

Preparation of Tumor Antigen-loaded Mature Dendritic Cells for Immunotherapy
Published on: August 1, 2013
Interleukin-15 enhances T-cell responses by stimulation with dendritic cells
1Department of Medical Oncology, Cancer Center, and State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, West China Hospital, West China Medical School, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China.
Introduction:
Cytokines play important roles in regulating immune responses. Interleukin-2 (IL-2) has usually been used as an adjuvant to enhance antitumour immune responses. However, its crucial role in activation-induced cell death, inhibition of homeostatic proliferation of CD8+ memory T cells and its notable biological side effects impair its prospect of application. IL-15 has several similar functions to IL-2 and shows potential advantages over IL-2, and is being investigated to enhance antitumour dendritic cell (DC) vaccine strategies in our ongoing studies.
Objective:
In this preliminary study, we evaluated the ability of IL-15, compared with IL-2, to act as an adjuvant to enhance T-cell responses activated by DCs in vitro.
Materials And Methods:
Bone marrow-derived DCs (BMDCs) were pulsed with tumour antigens and used to stimulate lymphocyte responses in the presence of IL-15 or IL-2. The activated T lymphocytes were examined by flow cytometric analysis, and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) enzyme-linked immunospot and cytotoxicity assays.
Results:
IL-15 was observed to activate lymphocytes with comparable phenotype characteristics of activated/memory CD8+ lymphocytes, compared with IL-2. Both in primary and secondary stimulation with DCs, when using IL-15 as an adjuvant, activated lymphocytes showed higher proportions of IFN-γ-secreting subsets. In secondary stimulation with BMDCs in the presence of IL-15, the activated lymphocytes showed a stronger cytotoxicity to antigen-specific tumour target cells.
Conclusions:
Our study suggested that IL-15 might be a prospective adjuvant for a DC vaccine strategy against cancers. The further observation that IL-15 acts as an adjuvant for an antitumour DC vaccine strategy is worth investigating.
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