Dendritic cell-based vaccine: a promising approach for cancer immunotherapy

The unique ability of dendritic cells to pick up antigens and to activate naive and memory CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells raised the possibility of using them to trigger a specific anti-tumor immunity. If numerous studies have shown a major interest in dendritic cell-based vaccines for cancer immunotherapy in animal models, only a few have been carried out in human cancers. In this review, we describe recent findings in the biology of dendritic cells that are important to generate anti-tumor cytotoxic T cells in vitro and we also detail clinical studies reporting the obtention of specific immunity to human cancers in vivo using reinfusion of dendritic cells pulsed with tumor antigens.