Abstract
Main obstacles to cancer vaccine efficacy are pre-existing antigenic load and immunoescape mechanisms, including tolerance against self tumor-associated antigens. Here we explored the role of tolerance in an antimetastatic vaccine approach based on dendritic cell-tumor cell (DC-TC) hybrids, thanks to the comparison between BALB-neuT mice, transgenic for and tolerant to rat HER-2/neu, with their nontolerant strain of origin BALB/c. Allogeneic DC-TC hybrid vaccine displayed a high antimetastatic activity in non-tolerant mice, but was far less effective in tolerant mice, even with intensified vaccine schedule. Tolerant BALB-neuT mice revealed a reduced ability to mount polarized Th1 responses. A further attempt to increase the antimetastatic activity by using LPS-matured DC hybrids failed. Allogeneic LPS-matured DC-TC hybrids induced high IFN-γ levels, but concomitantly also the highest production of IL-4 and IL-10 suggesting activation of mechanisms sustaining regulatory cells able to blunt vaccine efficacy. Our data in tolerant versus non-tolerant hosts suggest that clinical translation of effective DC-based strategies could benefit from more extensive investigations in tolerant transgenic models.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 4690-4697 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Vaccine |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 29-30 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jun 24 2011 |
Keywords
- Cancer vaccines
- Dendritic cells
- HER-2/neu
- Metastasis
- Transgenic mice
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Immunology and Microbiology(all)
- Infectious Diseases
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- veterinary(all)
- Molecular Medicine