Although the main mechanism by which OK432-stimulated DCs prolonged the recurrence-free survival was not elucidated, the tumoricidal activity of ABT-199 ic50 mature DCs was implicated in in vivo enhancement of antigen presentation, co-stimulation and inflammatory cytokine production. Very recent reports document injection of OK432-stimulated DCs into patients with cancer of the gastrointestinal tract or pancreas [44,45], but their anti-tumour effects were not defined clearly. The current study shows for the first time that OK432-stimulated DCs induce beneficial anti-tumour responses when transferred into tumour tissues during TAE therapy. The anti-tumour responses

may have been enhanced as a result of optimal

activation of the DCs with OK432 or combining infusion of stimulated DCs with TAE therapy. Inappropriately activated DCs may be unable to generate sufficient numbers of properly activated effector T lymphocytes [46]. As shown in Fig. 1, all these alterations could contribute to the further enhancement of anti-tumour effects compared to those in our previous study with immature DCs [20]. Furthermore, the tumour cell death-promoting therapies, e.g. chemotherapy [47] and TAE [48], can be expected to enhance the effects of therapeutic cancer vaccines by redressing the immunosuppressive tumour environment. NK cell activity and intracellular cytokine responses in CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes Decitabine and CD56+ NK cell subsets in PBMCs were not changed significantly in patients treated with OK432-stimulated DCs. Furthermore, we did not observe tumour antigen-specific MI-503 chemical structure T lymphocyte responses associated clearly with DC administration.

The data suggest therefore that the immune responses induced by the therapy applied here were not detectable systemically. Because cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses were enhanced in patients receiving > 3 × 107 cells [49,50], the numbers of transferred OK432-stimulated DCs were apparently not sufficient to induce responses detectable in the peripheral blood, but were enough to exert beneficial anti-tumour effects. In addition, many studies have concluded that cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses rarely predict clinical outcomes of DC-based immunotherapies [51,52] and that in many cases, also including our own studies [28,30], tumour-specific effector T lymphocytes co-exist with the tumours. Consistent with these observations, the current results suggest that cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses in PBMCs are not reliable predictors of beneficial anti-tumour effects in patients treated with the current OK432-stimulated DC strategy. Serum levels of the cytokines IL-9, IL-15 and TNF-α and the chemokines eotaxin and MIP-1β were increased following OK432-stimulated DC transfer, but decreased after TAE therapy without DC administration.