Purpose: To explore the preventive and therapeutic antitumor effects of nicotine-treated immature dendritic cells (imDC). Experimental Design: First, bone marrow^derived imDCs were stimulated with nicotine in vitro, and nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, costimulator molecules, chemokine receptor, and endocytosis ability of imDCs were detected by flow cytometry. Second, the DC-dependent antigen-specific T-cell proliferation, CTL priming, and interleukin-12 secretion were determined by flow cytometry, enzyme-linked immunospot assay, and ELISA, respectively. Finally, preventive and therapeutic antitumor effects of such imDCs were determined by i.p. transfer against tumor challenge or implantation in mice. Results: Nicotine could up-regulate expression of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, costimulatory molecules, such as CD80, CD86, and CD40, adhesion molecule CD11b, and chemokine receptor CCR7 and enhance endocytosis ability of imDCs. In addition, nicotine could promote imDCdependent CTL priming and interleukin-12 secretion in vitro. Most importantly, systemic transfer of ex vivo nicotine-stimulated imDCs could reveal preventive and therapeutic effect on tumor development. Conclusions: Ex vivo nicotine stimulation can significantly improve the efficacy of imDCs for adaptive therapy of cancer and nicotine-treated imDCs may be considered as a potential candidate for preventive and therapeutic tumor vaccination.Numerous approaches for antigen-specific active immunotherapy have been developed relying on random encounter of the vaccine with host dendritic cells (DC; refs. 1, 2). A lack of encounter of the vaccine antigen with DCs might result in the absence of an immune response, or alternatively, an inappropriate encounter might lead to silencing of the immune response (3). Therefore, studies are urgently needed based on ex vivo -generated autologous DCs loaded with antigen under controlled conditions. Some reports have shown that DCs loaded with antigens could induce therapeutic and protective antitumor immunity in mice (3, 4). But, the efficacy of therapeutic vaccination has been questioned recently (5). In the last decade, several groups have documents that nicotine has positive effects in treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, ulcerative colitis and, Tourette syndrome (6 -8). Although the expression of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) has been shown in many types of nonneuronal cells, such as DCs, epithelial cells, and endothelial cells (9), the effect of nicotine on immune cells is incompletely characterized. Some investigators showed that nicotine could promote immune cell activation (10 -12), whereas others indicated that nicotine might have immunosuppressive effects on macrophages and DCs (13 -15). In the present study, we first characterized that nicotine has stimulatory effects on immature DCs (imDC) and second showed that nicotine stimulation could enhance T-cell priming ability of imDCs. Finally and most importantly, we revealed the in vivo preventive and therapeutic effect on tumor devel...

The 5' region of the mouse rglutamyltrans-

CT120, a novel membrane-associated gene implicated in lung carcinogenesis, was previously identified from chromosome 17p13.3 locus, a hot mutation spot involved in human malignancies. In the present study, we further determined that CT120 ectopic expression could promote cell proliferation activity of NIH3T3 cells using MTS assay, and monitored the downstream effects of CT120 in NIH3T3 cells with Atlas mouse cDNA expression arrays. Among 588 known genes, 133 genes were found to be upregulated or downregulated by CT120. Two major signaling pathways involved in cell proliferation, cell survival and anti-apoptosis were overexpressed and activated in response to CT120: One is the Raf/MEK/Erk signal cascades and the other is the PI3K/Akt signal cascades, suggesting that CT120 might contribute, at least in part, to the constitutively activation of Erk and Akt in human lung caner cells. In addition, some tumor metastasis associated genes cathepsin B, cathepsin D, cathepsin L, MMP-2/TIMP-2 were also upregulated by CT120, upon which CT120 might be involved in tumor invasiveness and metastasis. In addition, CT120 might play an important role in tumor progression through modulating the expression of some candidate "Lung Tumor Progression" genes including B-Raf, BAX, and Cdc42.