Immunization with heat shock protein 105-pulsed dendritic cells leads to tumor rejection in mice

Recently, we reported that heat shock protein 105 (HSP105) DNA vaccination induced anti-tumor immunity. In this study, we set up a preclinical study to investigate the usefulness of dendritic cells (DCs) pulsed with mouse HSP105 as a whole protein for cancer immunotherapy in vivo. The recombinant HSP105 did not induce DC maturation, and the mice vaccinated with HSP105-pulsed BM-DCs were markedly prevented from the growth of subcutaneous tumors, accompanied with a massive infiltration of both CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells into the tumors. In depletion experiments, we proved that both CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells play a crucial role in anti-tumor immunity. Both CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells specific to HSP105 were induced by stimulation with HSP105-pulsed DCs. As a result, vaccination of mice with BM-DCs pulsed with HSP105 itself could elicit a stronger tumor rejection in comparison to DNA vaccination.