Phenotypic and functional characterization of clinical grade dendritic cells generated from patients with advanced breast cancer for therapeutic vaccination

Dendritic cells (DC) are promising candidates for cancer immunotherapy. However, it is not known whether in vitro-generated monocyte-derived DC from cancer patients are altered compared with DC from healthy donors. In a clinical phase I/II study, monocyte-derived DC were generated in vitro utilizing granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor and rh-interleukin-4 (IL-4) and used for cancer immunotherapy. In this study, we tested the effect of various maturation cocktails and performed a comparative evaluation of the DC phenotype and functional characteristics. Polyriboinosinic polyribocytidylic acid (Poly I:C) + tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) induced significant IL-12 p70 secretion, which was increased after addition of a decoy IL-10 receptor. The lymph node homing chemokine receptor CCR-7 expression was induced by TNF-alpha + IL-1beta + IL-6 + prostaglandin E-2 but was not induced by Poly I:C + TNF-alpha. In general, DC from patients had an intermediate maturity phenotype with a significantly higher expression of CD40 and CD54 compared with healthy donors. In vitro analyses showed an unimpaired capacity of the patient-derived DC for antigen-specific (cytomegalovirus, tetanus and keyhole limpet haemocyanin) T-cell stimulation, whereas the allostimulatory capacity of patient-derived DC was significantly decreased. These data suggest that patient-derived DC are more differentiated but are less sensitive to maturation-inducing agents than DC obtained from healthy individuals.