Abstract
Most patients with multiple myeloma (MM) cannot be cured with currently available therapies. Although complete remission could be achieved in about 50% of newly diagnosed patients with high-dose chemotherapy and tandem transplantation, relapses of the underlying disease occur frequently. To realize long-term disease-free survival, it will be necessary to develop complementary therapies that are non-cross-resistant with chemotherapy. To this end, immunotherapy aimed at inducing or enhancing tumor-specific immunity that may control or eradicate remaining tumor cells may be an appealing method. Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen-presenting cells and considered the best natural adjuvants for immunotherapy in malignancies. Vaccination with tumor antigen-pulsed DCs has been shown to be protective and therapeutic in animal tumor models, and induced a strong tumor-specific immunity and durable tumor regression in human solid tumors and B-cell lymphoma. As a result, clinical trials in various human malignancies have been initiated. This review will focus on DC-based immunotherapy in MM. I will discuss myeloma antigens and antigen-specific immune responses, the capacity of DCs to present myeloma antigens and induce cytotoxic T-cell responses, and clinical experience of DC vaccination in myeloma patients.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 2031-2038 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Leukemia and Lymphoma |
Volume | 44 |
Issue number | 12 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2003 |
Keywords
- Dendritic cells
- Immunotherapy
- Multiple myeloma
- T cells
- Tumor antigens
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Hematology
- Oncology
- Cancer Research