Dendritic cells transfected with a polyepitope DNA construct stimulate an antitumor cytotoxic response in various tumor diseases

Dendritic cells (DCs) loaded with tumor-associated antigens (TAA) are known to be the important agents in antitumor response realization and still figure in lots of treatment schemes in cancer immunotherapy research. Here, we evaluated a cell-based protocol involving the use of original DNA constructs encoding the wide range of TAA epitopes expressed on different epithelial cancers. The constructs were transfected into ex-vivo-generated DCs of cancer patients (breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and non-small cell lung cancer). Direct cytotoxicity assay of effector cells, activated with the transfected DCs, showed a significant increase in the cytotoxicity against autologous tumor cells. The use of DNA-constructs encoding a large number of TAA’s for the in vitro DC loading to activate the T cell response could be a reliable and unified approach for immunotherapy and relapse prevention in patients with epithelial cancers.