Dendritic cell/cytokine‐induced killer cell‐based immunotherapy in lung cancer: What we know and future landscape

Multiple modalities for lung cancer therapy have emerged in the past decade, whereas their clinical applications and survival‐beneficiary is little known. Vaccination with dendritic cells (DCs) or DCs/cytokine‐induced killer (CIK) cells has shown limited success in the treatment of patients with advanced non‐small‐cell lung cancer. To evaluate and overcome these limitations in further studies, in the present review, we sum up recent progress about DCs or DCs/CIKs‐based approaches for preclinical and clinical trials in patients with lung cancer and discuss some of the limited therapeutic success. Moreover, this review highlights the need to focus future studies on the development of new approaches for successful immunotherapy in patients with lung cancer. The most clinical trials performed are combined therapies as dendritic cells (DCs) or DC/cytokine‐induced killer therapy in combination with chemotherapy in advanced lung carcinoma. (a) A successful and effective vaccination will be provided when tumorigenic immune cells specifically target or inhibit their functions. (b) Vaccination exacerbates inflammatory conditions in the microenvironment of the tumor and given that the inhibitory effects of regulatory T cells on DC vaccines. (c) Another solution for a successful and effective DC therapy is the inhibition or targeting of inflammatory mediators secreted from the tumor cells in combination with vaccination.