title: Interleukin-15 dendritic cells as vaccine candidates for cancer immunotherapy.
abstract: Owing to their professional antigen-presenting capacity and unique potential to induce tumor antigen-specific T cell immunity, dendritic cells (DCs) have attracted much interest over the past decades for therapeutic vaccination against cancer. Clinical trials have shown that the use of tumor antigen-loaded DCs in cancer patients is safe and that it has the potential to induce anti-tumor immunity which, in some cases, culminates in striking clinical responses. Unfortunately, in a considerable number of patients, DC vaccination is unable to mount effective anti-tumor immune responses and, if it does so, the resultant immunity is often insufficient to translate into tangible clinical benefit. This underscores the necessity to re-design and optimize the current procedures for DC vaccine manufacturing. A new generation of DC vaccines with improved potency has now become available for clinical use as a result of extensive pre-clinical research. One of the promising next-generation DC vaccine candidates are interleukin (IL)-15-differentiated DCs. In this commentary, we will compile the research data that have been obtained by our group and other groups with these so-called IL-15 DCs and summarize the evidence supporting the implementation of IL-15 DCs in DC-based cancer vaccination regimens.
authors.affiliation: Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute; Laboratory of Experimental Hematology; Tumor Immunology Group (TIGR); University of Antwerp; Antwerp, Belgium; Center for Cell Therapy & Regenerative Medicine; Antwerp University Hospital; Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: Sébastien
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Anguille
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lion
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Van den Bergh
authors.forename: Heleen H
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Van Acker
authors.forename: Yannick
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Willemen
authors.forename: Evelien L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Smits
authors.forename: Viggo F
authors.initials: VF
authors.lastname: Van Tendeloo
authors.forename: Zwi N
authors.initials: ZN
authors.lastname: Berneman
mesh_terms: D019496:Cancer Vaccines / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000276:immunology*; D003713:Dendritic Cells / Q000276:immunology*; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D007167:Immunotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D019409:Interleukin-15 / Q000276:immunology*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy*
chemical_list: D019496:Cancer Vaccines; C569274:IL15 protein, human; D019409:Interleukin-15
keywords: cancer vaccination; dendritic cells; interleukin-15 dendritic cells; killer dendritic cells; natural killer cells