Abstract
Inducing effective anti-tumor immunity has become a major therapeutic strategy against cancer. Dendritic cells (DC) are a heterogenous population of antigen presenting cells that infiltrate tumors. While DC play a critical role in the priming and maintenance of local immunity, their functions are often diminished, or suppressed, by factors encountered in the tumor microenvironment. Furthermore, DC populations with immunosuppressive activities are also recruited to tumors, limiting T cell infiltration and promoting tumor growth. Anti-cancer therapies can impact the function of tumor-associated DC and/or alter their phenotype. Therefore, the design of effective anti-cancer therapies for clinical translation should consider how best to boost tumor-associated DC function to drive anti-tumor immunity. In this review, we discuss the different subsets of tumor-infiltrating DC and their role in anti-tumor immunity. Moreover, we describe strategies to enhance DC function within tumors and harness these cells for effective tumor immunotherapy.
Highlights
Dendritic cells (DC) represent a heterogenous group of innate immune cells that infiltrate tumors and process and present tumor-derived antigens to naïve T cells
DC play a critical role in priming anti-tumor T cell immunity and thereby represent a major therapeutic target for cancer immunotherapy
Such inhibition has been observed when Plasmacytoid DC (pDC) were incubated with conditioned medium from head and neck carcinoma and this effect was partially reversed in the presence of anti-IL-10 blocking antibodies [9]
Summary
Dendritic cells (DC) represent a heterogenous group of innate immune cells that infiltrate tumors and process and present tumor-derived antigens to naïve T cells. DC play a critical role in priming anti-tumor T cell immunity and thereby represent a major therapeutic target for cancer immunotherapy. The anti-tumor function of DC can be impeded by suppressive signals present in the tumor microenvironment. DC with immunosuppressive activity can be recruited to tumors, eliciting T cell tolerance and progressive tumor growth. Developing novel DC-targeted therapies is important to exploit the capacity of DC to initiate and enhance effective anti-tumor immunity. We first discuss the biology of tumor-associated DC by detailing the DC subsets present in tumors. We address anti-cancer strategies and examine how these therapeutic interventions impact tumor-associated DC function
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