Human dendritic cells engineered to express alpha tumor necrosis factor maintain cellular maturation and T-cell stimulation capacity.

Dendritic cell (DC) vaccine has been demonstrated to induce antitumor immunity in animal models. It has been shown that the efficiency of antitumor immunity by DC vaccine is closely correlated with DC maturation status. The mature human DCs generated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in the presence of granulocyte macrophage–colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interleukin (IL)-4, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α have widely contributed to their growing use in cancer vaccination trials. Although the objective clinical immune responses have been observed, the treatment results have proved to be somewhat disappointing. One question of whether these ex vivo–generated mature DCs can maintain their maturation status in vivo after DC vaccination is unclear. In this study, we investigated the influence of different culture media (RPMI 1640/10% fetal calf serum [FCS] versus serum-free AIM-V medium) on DC maturation and the change of maturation status of these ex vivo generated mature DCs during furt...