Heat Shock Motified Antigen Pulsed Dendritic Cells To Induce Specific Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes

BACKGROUND: Adoptive tumor immunotherapy is currently a developing approach for the clinical treatment of cancer.It is critical in antitumor immune responses that the APCs (antigen presenting cells) present tumor antigens(Tags) to T cells to activate immune system to eradicate tumor cells. DCs, described as powerful antigen presenting cells,can effectively intake,process and present antigens ,and are unique subpopulation of APCs.They activate naive T cells significantly, and thereby work as the center of immune responses.The DCs can professionally use foreign and memory antigens to prime memory B and T cells, and activate resting naive T cells. All these features facilitate DCs to serve as a nature's adjuvant for cancer-specific vaccination, which has been applied to study some cancer treatment.Tumor cells treated with heat shock could generate high level of induced heat shock proteins (HSPs). Tumor-derived HSPs have been identified as a potent immunogen and could induce specific antitumor immunity .DCs have a high affinity receptor CD91 for HSP70.Recent research suggested that HSP from tumor peptide might induce DCs maturation and that DCs loaded with tumor antigens would be applied in tumor immunotherapy as specific tumor vaccination.OBJECTIVE: The aim of the current study in vitro was to observe whether heat shock motified uterine cervical cancer antigen (HSP-U₁₄-Ag) pulsed dendritic cells (DCs) might induce cytotoxic T lymphocytes.