Indium labelled E/L-S DC (without antigen loading) is administered i.v. to a patient to study the reaction with regard to DC migration.

In order to test homogeneous yeast populations, pure spore cultures were obtained by using this strain whose sporulation efficiency is 100%. To prepare spores, cells were grown on YPD plates, replicated on SPOIV medium (2% potassium acetate, 0.25% yeast extract, 0,1% glucose). Zymolyase (2 mg/ml) was used to digest ascum and liberate spores. Zymoliase was inactivated by heat (65°C for 2 minutes) and washed away carefully together with the remainings of the empty ascus, by resuspending twice the spore culture in 500 µl of distilled water centrifuging and disc...

After 6 hour of stimulation, DCs were collected, washed 3 times with PBS, treated with zymolyase, washed twice and cells, lysated with a hypotonic solution (KCl 0.05%), were plated on YPD. Survival of yeast cells, spores or hyphae after uptake was reported as percentage of colony forming units after 3 days relative to the total number of cells growing in the absence of DCs exposure. To assess the importance of ROS production in DC killing ability, DPI (10 microM) was added 30 minutes before stimulation and survival of microorganisms was assessed using the same...

We evaluated the capacity of autologous DC and HEK293 cells transfected with relevant HLA alleles to function as T cell targets in Elispot assays upon transfection with tumor antigen encoding plasmids. Due to strong background from the autologous DC we decided that HEK293 transfected with one HLA-allele at a time plus simultaneously transfected with up to 5 tumor antiges would be optimal to screen for antigen specificity in the patients T cells. However, during a second T cell culture to expand large numbers of T cells for this screening procedure a drastic ex...

We evaluated the capacity of autologous DC and HEK293 cells transfected with relevant HLA alleles to function as T cell targets in Elispot assays upon transfection with tumor antigen encoding plasmids. Due to strong background from the autologous DC we decided that HEK293 transfected with one HLA-allele at a time plus simultaneously transfected with up to 5 tumor antiges would be optimal to screen for antigen specificity in the patients T cells. However, during a second T cell culture to expand large numbers of T cells for this screening procedure a drastic ex...

We attempted to improve the adoptive transfer protocol for immunotherapy by stimulating T cells with monocyte derived DC pulsed with tumor lysate, instead of simply adding tumor lysate into PBMC cultures. T cells raised exhibited some tumor reactivity and outgrowth of a distinct T cell population could be observed.

We assessed the capacity of the electroporated DCs to activate naive HLA-A2-restricted MelanA-specific CD8(+) T cells without the addition of any exogenous cytokines. A >500-fold increase in MelanA-specific CD8(+) T cells was observed when compared with immature DCs, and a >200-fold increase when compared with cytokine cocktail-matured DCs. In correlation, we found a marked increase in cytolytic and IFN-gamma/tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) secreting CD8(+) T cells. Our data indicate that immature DCs genetically modified to express stimulating molecul...

These cells do not acquire a mature phenotype and do not lead to an enhanced secretion of several cytokines/chemokines.

These cells acquire a mature phenotype along with an enhanced secretion of several cytokines/chemokines. Moreover, these DCs are very potent in inducing naive CD4(+) T cells to differentiate into interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma)-secreting type 1 T helper (Th1) cells.

Attenuated Expression of A20 Markedly Increases the Efficacy of Double Stranded RNA-Activated Dendritic Cells as an Anti-Cancer Vaccine A20 is a zinc finger protein with ubiquitine-modifying activity. It has been described that A20 negatively regulates signaling induced by the tumor necrosis factor receptor and toll like receptor (TLR) family in a number of cell types, including mouse bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (DCs). However, the expression and effect of A20 in activated monocyte-derived DCs have not been previously evaluated. We report that DC...

We established tumor cell lines from renal cell cancer in our laboratory.

We established tumor cell lines from pancreatic cancer in our laboratory.

We established tumor cell lines from melanoma in our laboratory.

By using TAP deficient cells, we found that TAP is also necessary for the process of presentation of the antigen in MHC class I. We further characterized the antigen depot by confocal microscopy and found that the antigen co-localized with the lysosomal marker LAMP1, but not with the endosomal marker EEA1, TAP, MHC class I or MHC class II. We conclude that the antigen depot is a storage compartment and not a loading compartment. We have started to examine depot formation by targeting antigen to other receptors. For example, we have found that presentation ...

A quantitative microarray approach that detects 723 human mature miR (miRBase 10.1, Dec 2007), was used to measure miR expression profile in these cells.

These DC were exposed to different maturation cocktails and various activators or inhibitors and profiled.

These macrophages were used to perform a transcriptional profiling. Stimulation was done with different stimuli at different time points in the presence or absence of a kinase inhibitors.

On these cells, transcriptional profiling was performed and a comparative pathway-based analysis was done.

These cells were stained with anti-CD11c antibodies for a process of dead cell uptake by DC.

These stained were stained for a process of dead cell uptake by DC.