Dendritic cells transfected with PEG10 recombinant adenovirus elicit anti-tumor immune response in vitro and in vivo

Recent evidence demonstrates that PEG10 plays an essential role in hepatocarcinogenesis and development, thus it could be regarded as a therapeutical target for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In addition, transduction with recombinant, replication-defective adenoviral (Ad) vectors encoding tumor associated antigen into dendritic cells (DCs) is an efficient strategy to elicit antigen specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) for cancer therapy. In the present study, DCs were transduced with the PEG10 recombinant adenovirus, and were utilized to elicit CTLs in vitro.Moreover, the Trimera mice were immunized with the transduced DCs to elicit the immune response, the tumor growth and the life span of tumor bearing mice were observed. The results demonstrated that the transduced DCs could effectively induce specific CTL response against HCC without lysing autologous lymphocytes, but also significantly inhibit the tumor growth and prolong the life span of tumor bearing mice. These data suggest that PEG10 recombinant adenovirus transduced DCs can induce anti-tumor immunity against HCC expressing PEG10 in vitro and in vivo. Thus, the transduction of DCs with Ad-PEG10 provides a promising strategy for cancer immunotherapy of HCC.