Dendritic cells capture killed tumor cells and present their antigens to elicit tumor-specific immune responses.

Due to their capacity to induce primary immune responses, dendritic cells (DC) are attractive vectors for immunotherapy of cancer. Yet the targeting of tumor Ags to DC remains a challenge. Here we show that immature human monocyte-derived DC capture various killed tumor cells, including Jurkat T cell lymphoma, malignant melanoma, and prostate carcinoma. DC loaded with killed tumor cells induce MHC class I- and class II-restricted proliferation of autologous CD8+ and CD4+ T cells, demonstrating cross-presentation of tumor cell-derived Ags. Furthermore, tumor-loaded DC elicit expansion of CTL with cytotoxic activity against the tumor cells used for immunization. CTL elicited by DC loaded with the PC3 prostate carcinoma cell bodies kill another prostate carcinoma cell line, DU145, suggesting recognition of shared Ags. Finally, CTL elicited by DC loaded with killed LNCap prostate carcinoma cells, which express prostate specific Ag (PSA), are able to kill PSA peptide-pulsed T2 cells. This demonstrates that induced CTL activity is not only due to alloantigens, and that alloantigens do not prevent the activation of T cells specific for tumor-associated Ags. This approach opens the possibility of using allogeneic tumor cells as a source of tumor Ag for antitumor therapies.