Impaired cytotoxic T lymphocyte inductivity by dendritic cells derived from patients with hepatitis C virus-positive hepatocellular carcinoma.
OBJECTIVE
Peptide-based therapeutic vaccines are being developed. The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility of immunotherapy to hepatitis C virus (HCV)-positive hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by assessing the inductivity of peptide-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) by dendritic cells.


METHODS
The inductivity of CTL was characterized in six patients with HCV-positive HCC, and compared to seven healthy volunteers and six patients with chronic HCV hepatitis (control).


RESULTS
Peptide-specific CTL was comparably induced in controls, but not induced in any patients with HCC. To characterize this, the cytokine profile and the expression of surface molecules interacting between dendritic and T cells were evaluated. Among the cytokines, production of interferon (IFN)-gamma was found to be impaired and closely related to the results of CTL assays, while the expression of surface molecules showed no significant changes.


CONCLUSIONS
In HCV-positive HCC patients, CTL inductivity by dendritic cells is impaired. This may be related to the impaired production of IFN-gamma.
Ohno
Tomoyoshi
T
Department of Gastroenterology, Social Insurance Chukyo Hospital, Nagoya, Japan.
Hirashima
Noboru
N
Orito
Etsuro
E
Hasegawa
Izumi
I
Fujiwara
Kei
K
Itoh
Kiyoaki
K
Ozasa
Atsushi
A
Shinkai
Noboru
N
Tanaka
Yasuhito
Y
Kato
Takanobu
T
Ueda
Ryuzo
R
Sakakibara
Kenji
K