Boosting Immunotherapy Against Brain Cancer

NIH | MARCH 30, 2015

Cancer immunotherapies harness the potential of the immune system to seek and destroy cancers. One innovative approach being developed is to use dendritic cells.

Artistic rendering of the surface of a human dendritic cell. Image credit: NIH

Dendritic cells are isolated from the patient’s blood, engineered to express antigens from the tumor, and then injected back into the patient as a vaccine. Once in the patient, the engineered dendritic cells migrate to the lymph node and activate T cells to fight the tumor and create an immune memory to prevent the cancer from coming back.

Researchers from Duke University Medical Center tested whether a strategy to increase dendritic cell migration to lymph nodes would improve the effects of a dendritic cell vaccine against glioblastoma multiforme, the most common form of malignant brain cancer in adults.

The results showed that administering a tetanus booster before the vaccine increased dendritic cell migration to lymph nodes and significantly improved both the time without disease progression and overall survival. Patients who received the tetanus booster lived an average of more than 3 years after diagnosis compared to 1.5 years in those who received dendritic cells alone.

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