In vitro antitumor immune response induced by dendritic cells transduced with human livin α recombinant adenovirus

•Livin α-transduced DCs can trigger livin α specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes.•Livin α-transduced DCs can induce anti-tumor immune response against the various tumor cell lines.•Livin α can probably serve as a target of immunotherapy for various malignant tumors.

Transduction with recombinant, replication-defective adenoviral (rAd) vectors encoding a transgene is an efficient method for gene transfer into human dendritic cells (DCs). Livin is a good candidate for cancer immunotherapy since it is overexpressed in most common human cancers, poorly expressed in most normal adult tissues. Two splicing variants of livin, designated livin α and livin β, have been identified. In this study, we used human livin α recombinant adenovirus (rAd-hlivin α) to transduced DCs. We found that DCs transduced with rAd-hlivin α (rAd-hlivin α DCs) could effectively induce human livin α specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) in vitro against various tumor cell lines.