Personalized dendritic cell vaccination in cancer therapy: An evidence-based research study

Although chemotherapy is considered to be the golden standard, it does not come without a price. Toxicities and resistance are frequently limiting its effectiveness. Immunotherapy has emerged as a safer therapeutic alternative but still has a long way until it has proven to be of equal efficacy. A type of immunotherapy is dendritic cell (DC) vaccination.

We have developed a novel platform for the generation of autologous DCs that have been activated against peptides that are personalized for each patient individually. The aim of the study was to clinically evaluate this platform.

Our platform and our algorithm for the determination of the immunogenic peptides has been tested. DC generation was verified both morphologically and by CD80/86 expression. Peptide antigenicity was determined using a number of T-cell epitope prediction algorithms. Response to therapy was evaluated using response evaluation criteria in solid tumors (RECIST) criteria by the doctors involved. Immune status was also evaluated before and after DC vaccination and correlated with circulated tumor cell count.

It was found that DC vaccine increased immune activation while correlated with decreased circulating tumor cell counts. Clinical evaluation by the determination of immune markers may be a superior tool than using RECIST criteria.

Dendritic cell therapies could prove to be a valuable tool in cancer treatment.