Dendritic Cell-Based Immunotherapy in Lung Cancer

Abstract

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. The advent of immune checkpoint inhibitors has led to a paradigm shift in the treatment of metastatic non-small cell and small cell lung cancer. However, despite prolonged overall survival, only a minority of the patients derive clinical benefit from these treatments suggesting that the full anti-tumoral potential of the immune system is not being harnessed yet. One way to overcome this problem is to combine immune checkpoint blockade with different strategies aimed at inducing or restoring cellular immunity in a tumor-specific, robust, and durable way. Owing to their unique capacity to initiate and regulate T cell responses, dendritic cells have been extensively explored as tools for immunotherapy in many tumors, including lung cancer. In this review, we provide an update on the nearly twenty years of experience with dendritic cell-based immunotherapy in lung cancer. We summarize the main results from the early phase trials and give an overview of the future perspectives within this field.

The Intriguing Thyroid Hormones–Lung Cancer Association as Exemplification of the Thyroid Hormones–Cancer Association: Three Decades of Evolving Research

“…First, very recently, Zhou et al suggested that LT3 could be repositioned for cancer immunotherapy based on its ability to block the T Cell Immunoreceptor with Ig and ITIM domains (TIGIT)/poliovirus receptor (PVR) interaction—an emerging immune checkpoint system [ 135 ]. Second, the ability of LT3 to induce phenotypic and functional activation of DCs [ 23 ] could potentiate the promising dendritic cell-based immunotherapy in lung cancer [ 136 ]. Third, preliminary in vitro data have suggested that pretreatment with LT3 or administration of LT3 during chemotherapy could reinforce the efficacy of chemotherapy—a promising strategy known as “choriocarcinoma-mimic chemotherapy”, or “neo-endocrinochemotherapy”.…”

Safety and efficacy of dendritic cell-based immunotherapy (DCVAC/LuCa) combined with carboplatin/pemetrexed for patients with advanced non-squamous non-small-cell lung cancer without oncogenic drivers

“…Conventional production processes of DC vaccines involve TAAs after a comprehensive and individualized TAA selection. 20 However, we enforced DCs with killed human adenocarcinoma cell lines during manufacturing, with the ability to recognize full antigens of human adenocarcinoma cells. Our procedure increased the possibility of provoking a stronger tumor-directed immune response, and was at the same time more practical as individualized antigen selection was no longer necessary.…”

RNA-Based Therapeutics: Current Developments in Targeted Molecular Therapy of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer

“…The clinical administration of DC vaccines is first achieved by using leukapheresis to harvest monocytes from peripheral blood. Subsequently, immature and mature DCs are generated through culturing with IL-4 and GM-CSF and are then exposed to activating factors for maturation [109]. Next, a tumor biopsy is taken from the patient, after which TAA mRNA or total tumor mRNA is electroporated into mature DCs.…”

“…Next, a tumor biopsy is taken from the patient, after which TAA mRNA or total tumor mRNA is electroporated into mature DCs. The resulting antigenloaded DCs are then cryopreserved and injected back into the patient [109]. In this process, it is evident that DC vaccines are a considerably expensive and difficult treatment modality to produce, which is one of its main drawbacks.…”