[In vitro culture of human dendritic cells by using a HydroCell™]

Cancer Immunotherapy using dendritic cells would be a feasible and useful tool for cancer treatment. However, no immunotherapy has been approved in Japan because of a lack of any randomized clinical studies. We are now trying to develop an automatic dendritic cell culture system in order to perform a large-scale randomized clinical trial. In this study, we investigated the utility of a HydroCell™ for in vitro culture of human dendritic cells induced from peripheral blood monocytes. The dendritic cells grew one and a half times when they were cultured in a HydroCell™. All the cells were floating and harvested easily without any enzymes. The cells expressed the CD80 and CD83 molecules on their surface and still had strong phagocytosis. This results demonstrated that a HydroCell™ was a useful tool for in vitro culture of dendritic cells.