Dendritic cells expressing tumor antigen, GM-CSF elicit potent tumor-specific immune response.

2002 NOV 13 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- by Maria G. Essig, MS, ELS, senior medical writer - Cotransduction of granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) into dendritic cells (DCs) already capable of expressing specific tumor antigens significantly increased the antitumor immune response in mice, according to a report in Clinical Cancer Research.

"Recently, several studies have shown that vaccine therapy using dendritic cells genetically engineered to express a surrogate tumor antigen can effectively induce antitumor immunity," said Masaki Nakamura and colleagues at Wakayama Medical University in Japan.

Using an adenovirus, the investigators transduced bone marrow DCs from mice with murine endogenous tumor antigen gp70 expressed in CT26 cells, and used the engineered DCs to vaccinate mice carrying CT26 tumors. The cytotoxic T cell (CTL) immune response to the gp70-expressing DCs was significantly greater than that found in the controls (p

Nakamura and collaborators found that DCs able to express tumor-associated antigen and GM-CSF enhance "CC chemokine receptor 7 expression on DCs, leading to improved migratory capacity of DCs to draining lymph nodes." In mouse models vaccination with the cotransduced DCs exhibited notable efficacy.

"These results support that vaccination therapy using DCs simultaneously transduced with tumor-associated antigen can elicit potent CTL response, and GM-CSF-cotransduction of DCs could optimize therapeutic response," reported Nakamura and ...