Immunotherapy exploiting the versatility of dendritic cells

Dendritic cells (DC) are the most potent antigen-presenting cells that initiate T cell-mediated immune responses. The development of methods to generate a large number of DC in vitro has facilitated their application to immunotherapy. Adding tumor antigens to DC in vitro and administering them to cancer patients is expected to induce effective immune responses to cancers, which are poorly immunogenic in most cases. There are several parameters that need to be optimized to improve the efficacy of DC-based immunotherapy. Because the immune system has developed in order to eliminate microbial pathogens and is thus well equipped with machinery for that purpose, reproducing events occurring during anti-infection immune responses for antitumor immunity may lead to the development of effective tumor immunotherapy.