The Resurgence of Interest in Anti-Cancer Dendritic Cell Vaccines | Biomedgrid

The ultimate appreciation of dendritic cells (DC) and their role in biology occurred in the fall of 2011 when Ralph Steinman was awarded the Nobel Prize for his seminal work on the discovery, characterization, and biological function of DC [1,2]. The enthusiasm for clinical application of DC as presenters of tumor antigens may have peaked before 2000 following initial positive clinical reports in melanoma and lymphoma [3,4]. It took a decade of clinical trials and evolution from an endpoint of progression-free survival to one of overall survival to gain FDA-approval of a DC-based treatment product for commercialization, namely, sipuleucel-T for the treatment of prostate cancer [5]. Unfortunately, that product was not greeted enthusiastically by healthcare providers and payors because of the limited improvement in survival, and the cost of a course of therapy. Among dendritic cell vaccines (DCV), sipuleucel-T is unique in that it is an intravenous therapy that contains a mix of leukocytes stimulated by a vector containing prostatic acid phosphatase and granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) that was arguably more of an adoptive cell therapy than a vaccine.