Tumour-derived exosomes as antigen delivery carriers in dendritic cell-based immunotherapy for malignant mesothelioma

摘要

BackgroundIn 2001, it was postulated that tumour-derived exosomes could be a potent source of tumour-associated antigens (TAA). Since then, much knowledge is gained on their role in tumorigenesis but only very recently tumour-derived exosomes were used in dendritic cell (DC)-based immunotherapy. For this, DCs were cultured ex-vivo and loaded with exosomes derived from immunogenic tumours such as melanoma or glioma and re-administrated to induce anti-tumour responses in primary and metastatic tumour mouse models. In contrast, malignant mesothelioma (MM) is a non-immunogenic tumour and because only a few mesothelioma-specific TAA are known to date, we investigated whether mesothelioma-derived exosomes could be used as antigen source in DC-based immunotherapy.