Dendritic Cell Vaccines

In the pantheon of approaches to harness the immune system to fight disease, dendritic cell vaccines have had various degrees of success in the past, but with the recent successes in immunotherapy, there is a significant renewed interest in their potential. Steinman (who earned the Nobel prize for his seminal investigations) et al., first described dendritic cells (DCs) in 1973 after isolating them from glass adherent cells in mouse peripheral lymphoid organs [1, 2]. Subsequently, dendritic cells were found to play a central role as antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in the initiation of a T-cell immune response. DCs’ aptitude as APCs has led them to be utilized clinically both ex vivo for the stimulation and expansion of antigen-specific T cells and in vivo most commonly as dendritic cell tumor vaccines.