The Science
The discovery and application of Dendritic Cell Immunotherapy.
Nobel Assembly Prize 2011
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011 was awarded to immunologists, Bruce A Beutler and Jules a Hoffman, for discovering receptor proteins and their ability to identify activate the immune system. The award was shared with physician Ralph Steinman who discovered the DC’s role in adaptive immunity.
About Dendritic Cell Immunotherapy
In this review article, we first explain immunobiology of DC and the development of DC vaccines. Then, we concentrate on the DC immunotherapy by highlighting combinational approaches to enhance the efficacy of cancer treatment strategies.
Clinical Studies
The discovery of dendritic cells is one of the most important breakthroughs is adaptive immunity. Dendritic cells (DCs) are considered to be professional antigen presenting cells (APCs), each containing a variety of subsets that can reside in organs or migrate amongst the lymphoid and non-lymphoid organs.
In a normal healthy condition, DCs collectively process and present antigens on Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) class I and II. However, they are activated further after being exposed to antigens.
Powerful immune responses
Recently, several studies have been undertaken to improve antigen presentation potency to elicit more powerful immune responses against tumor cells. In DC-based cancer immunotherapy, DC is obtained from the patient and modulated ex vivo (outside the body) in order to entice the immune system to eliminate tumors. Wide-ranging research has been undertaken to evaluate long-term anti-tumor immune responses by DCs.
Combined with traditional cancer treatments
In addition, using a combination of DC vaccines in tandem with other cancer therapies, like chemotherapy and monoclonal antibodies, can result in an efficient cancer therapy.
“… Leukocytes, or white blood cells, are well known as core components of the immune system (Nicholson 2016). As such, modulation of their response and functional behavior has long been considered as a plausible strategy to suppress cancer growth (Esfahani et al. 2020), to resolve inflammation (Serhan and Savill 2005) and to treat autoimmune diseases (Trevaskis et al. 2010; Wraith 2017). One immunomodulation strategy of interest is adoptive cell therapy (Foster et al. 2019), in which a patient’s own immune cells are extracted and transfected in vitro or ex vivo to modulate their immune function before infusing them back into the patient. …”
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