Dendritic Cell Vaccines Volume II

A special issue of Pharmaceutics (ISSN 1999-4923). This special issue belongs to the section "Gene and Cell Therapy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 4801

Special Issue Editors

Faculty of Pharmacy and Center for Neurosciences and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra, 3004-531 Coimbra, Portugal
Interests: immunopharmacology; pharmacotoxicology; innate immune cells; inflammation; immunotherapy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Medical Sciences and Institute of Biomedicine – iBiMED, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
Interests: immunobiology of innate immune cells; signal transduction; cell-based therapies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Tecnimede Group – Tecnimede SA, Sintra, Portugal
Interests: tumor immunotherapy; dendritic cells biology; cell-based vaccines
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

At the interface between the innate and adaptive immune system, dendritic cells (DCs) can initiate and direct adaptive immune responses. This ability is exploitable in DC vaccination strategies, in which DCs (endogenous or differentiated ex-vivo) are manipulated to prime or boost a tumor-specific immune response. DC vaccination remains a promising approach with the potential to further improve cancer immunotherapy with little or no evidence of treatment-limiting toxicity. However, evidence for objective clinical antitumor activity of DC vaccination is currently limited, hampering the clinical implementation. Indeed, DC-based vaccines long-term efficacy depends on a number of parameters that are often underestimated, encompassing the immunosuppressive circuitries that are in place in the microenvironment of most solid tumors, the evolution of antigen-loss variants, the need for the establishment of clinical standard operating procedures and the overall immunological competence of the patient.  Therefore, to improve their clinical efficacy, it is mandatory to design novel and improved strategies that can boost adaptive and innate immunity against cancer, helping to overcome DCs-vaccines limitations.

This Special Issue of Pharmaceutics focuses on new approaches to improve the immunogenic profile of DCs towards tumor cells, paving the way to the development of new DCs-based immunotherapeutic strategies. We welcome articles concerning all aspects covering the key biological qualities of DCs for immunotherapy, the wide range of adjuvants available, the multiple forms of tumor antigen loading, and different schedules and routes of vaccine administration. The potential to strengthen responses with other anti-cancer combinatorial approaches to boost the clinical potency of DC-based vaccines is also welcome.

We invite experts from academia or industry to contribute to this Special Issue with original research articles or reviews.

Dr. Maria Teresa Cruz
Prof. Dr. Bruno Miguel Neves
Dr. Mylène Carrascal
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

 

Keywords

  • dendritic cells
  • cancer vaccines
  • immunotherapy
  • cell-based therapy
  • tumor antigens

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 3124 KiB  
Article
LL-37 as a Powerful Molecular Tool for Boosting the Performance of Ex Vivo-Produced Human Dendritic Cells for Cancer Immunotherapy
by Dmitry Stakheev, Pavla Taborska, Katerina Kalkusova, Jirina Bartunkova and Daniel Smrz
Pharmaceutics 2022, 14(12), 2747; https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics14122747 - 08 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1307
Abstract
Ex vivo-produced dendritic cells (DCs) constitute the core of active cellular immunotherapy (ACI) for cancer treatment. After many disappointments in clinical trials, the current protocols for their preparation are attempting to boost their therapeutic efficacy by enhancing their functionality towards Th1 response and [...] Read more.
Ex vivo-produced dendritic cells (DCs) constitute the core of active cellular immunotherapy (ACI) for cancer treatment. After many disappointments in clinical trials, the current protocols for their preparation are attempting to boost their therapeutic efficacy by enhancing their functionality towards Th1 response and capability to induce the expansion of cytotoxic tumor-specific CD8+ T cells. LL-37 is an antimicrobial peptide with strong immunomodulatory potential. This potential was previously found to either enhance or suppress the desired anti-tumor DC functionality when used at different phases of their ex vivo production. In this work, we show that LL-37 can be implemented during the whole process of DC production in a way that allows LL-37 to enhance the anti-tumor functionality of produced DCs. We found that the supplementation of LL-37 during the differentiation of monocyte-derived DCs showed only a tendency to enhance their in vitro-induced lymphocyte enrichment with CD8+ T cells. The supplementation of LL-37 also during the process of DC antigen loading (pulsation) and maturation significantly enhanced the cell culture enrichment with CD8+ T cells. Moreover, this enrichment was also associated with the downregulated expression of PD-1 in CD8+ T cells, significantly higher frequency of tumor cell-reactive CD8+ T cells, and superior in vitro cytotoxicity against tumor cells. These data showed that LL-37 implementation into the whole process of the ex vivo production of DCs could significantly boost their anti-tumor performance in ACI. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dendritic Cell Vaccines Volume II)
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Review

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21 pages, 2915 KiB  
Review
Lentiviral Vectors as a Vaccine Platform against Infectious Diseases
by Kirill Nemirov, Maryline Bourgine, François Anna, Yu Wei, Pierre Charneau and Laleh Majlessi
Pharmaceutics 2023, 15(3), 846; https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics15030846 - 05 Mar 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2701
Abstract
Lentiviral vectors are among the most effective viral vectors for vaccination. In clear contrast to the reference adenoviral vectors, lentiviral vectors have a high potential for transducing dendritic cells in vivo. Within these cells, which are the most efficient at activating naive T [...] Read more.
Lentiviral vectors are among the most effective viral vectors for vaccination. In clear contrast to the reference adenoviral vectors, lentiviral vectors have a high potential for transducing dendritic cells in vivo. Within these cells, which are the most efficient at activating naive T cells, lentiviral vectors induce endogenous expression of transgenic antigens that directly access antigen presentation pathways without the need for external antigen capture or cross-presentation. Lentiviral vectors induce strong, robust, and long-lasting humoral, CD8+ T-cell immunity and effective protection against several infectious diseases. There is no pre-existing immunity to lentiviral vectors in the human population and the very low pro-inflammatory properties of these vectors pave the way for their use in mucosal vaccination. In this review, we have mainly summarized the immunological aspects of lentiviral vectors, their recent optimization to induce CD4+ T cells, and our recent data on lentiviral vector-based vaccination in preclinical models, including prophylaxis against flaviviruses, SARS-CoV-2, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dendritic Cell Vaccines Volume II)
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