Benencia Fabian, Sprague Leslee, McGinty John, Pate Michelle, Muccioli Maria
Biomedical Engineering Program, Russ College of Engineering and Technology, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701-2979, USA.
J Biomed Biotechnol. 2012;2012:425476. doi: 10.1155/2012/425476. Epub 2012 Mar 15.
Many clinical trials have been carried out or are in progress to assess the therapeutic potential of dendritic-cell- (DC-) based vaccines on cancer patients, and recently the first DC-based vaccine for human cancer was approved by the FDA. Herewith, we describe the general characteristics of DCs and different strategies to generate effective antitumor DC vaccines. In recent years, the relevance of the tumor microenvironment in the progression of cancer has been highlighted. It has been shown that the tumor microenvironment is capable of inactivating various components of the immune system responsible for tumor clearance. In particular, the effect of the tumor microenvironment on antigen-presenting cells, such as DCs, does not only render these immune cells unable to induce specific immune responses, but also turns them into promoters of tumor growth. We also describe strategies likely to increase the efficacy of DC vaccines by reprogramming the immunosuppressive nature of the tumor microenvironment.
已经开展了许多临床试验，或者正在进行相关试验，以评估基于树突状细胞（DC）的疫苗对癌症患者的治疗潜力，最近首款用于人类癌症的DC疫苗获得了美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）的批准。在此，我们描述DC的一般特征以及生成有效的抗肿瘤DC疫苗的不同策略。近年来，肿瘤微环境在癌症进展中的相关性已得到凸显。研究表明，肿瘤微环境能够使负责清除肿瘤的免疫系统的各种成分失活。特别是，肿瘤微环境对抗抗原呈递细胞（如DC）的影响不仅使这些免疫细胞无法诱导特异性免疫反应，还将它们转变为肿瘤生长的促进者。我们还描述了可能通过重新编程肿瘤微环境的免疫抑制特性来提高DC疫苗疗效的策略。
