Recruiting dendritic cells to improve antibody therapy of cancer

摘要

Cancer vaccines have been pursued for over a century in an attempt to harness the specificity and many resistance potentials of the immune system. Recent advances in immunology, including the importance of antigen-presenting dendritic cells (DCs) in initiating T cell immunity against pathogens and tumors, have provided new guidelines for immunotherapy. Simultaneously over the last decade, tumor-specific mAbs have emerged as effective and specific immunotherapeutics against human cancers. In this issue of PNAS, Groh et al. bring the fields of DC biology and mAbs together with an approach to target a wide range of tumors to DCs. If successfully translated to the clinic, their mAb approach may prove powerful for boosting tumor immunity.