Dendritic cells transfected with lentiviral vector-encoding human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor augment anti-tumour T-cell response in vitro

Summary Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen‐presenting cells that can actively taken up and present tumour‐derived proteins to induce a tumour‐specific immune response. Granulocyte‐macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (GM‐CSF) plays a pivotal role in the generation, sensitization, maturation and survival of DC. We charged the peripheral blood monocyte cell‐derived DC with tumour lysate, and then transfected the DC with lentiviral vector‐encoding human GM‐CSF (hGM‐CSF). The antigen‐presenting capacity of the hGM‐CSF‐transfected DC was tested by means of the mixed lymphocyte reaction and cytotoxic T‐lymphocyte assay using wild‐type DC as the control. The Lenti‐hGM‐CSF‐transfected DC was able to stimulate the proliferation of naive allogeneic T lymphocytes and to generate tumour‐specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes more efficiently than the wild‐type DC. This data indicates that Lenti‐hGM‐CSF‐transfected DC could potentially be used as an effective clinical approach for cancer immunotherapy.