Abstract
Dendritic cells are professional antigen-presenting cells able to prime naive T lymphocytes and regulate steadily the delicate balance between tolerance and activation during the immune response. In past years several reports have shown that genetically engineered dendritic cells (DCs) can be a powerful tool for inducing an antigen-specific immune response. The use of such modified antigen-presenting cells is a real working hypothesis in preclinical studies and in clinical vaccination approaches for cancer treatment. The definition of optimal transfection conditions for preserving DC survival and functionally is necessary to design a correct immunotherapeutic protocol. Different lipid-based transfection compounds were studied for their effects on DC survival, phenotype and functional properties. All the transfection procedures were able to select DCs with a higher expression of activation and costimulatory molecules (ie MHCII-DR, CD83, CD86, CD25) than the untreated DCs. However, only two compounds (LipofectAMINE PLUS and FuGENE 6), preserved or even increased the immunopotency of DCs as antigen-presenting cells. These protocols were applied to modify DCs in order to express an epithelial tumor-associated antigen, MUC1, and such cells were able to induce in vitro a specific immune response in healthy donors.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1458-1466 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Gene Therapy |
Volume | 7 |
Issue number | 17 |
Publication status | Published - 2000 |
Keywords
- Cancer vaccine
- Human dendritic cells
- Transfection
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Genetics