In vitro antigen-specific cytotoxic T cell response against esophageal carcinoma cells induced by HPV18E7-transfected dendritic cells

Abstract

Human Papillomavirus (HPV)-associatedesophageal carcinoma (EC) is a high incidence tumorworldwide. Dendritic cell (DC)-based tumor vaccine isconsidered an alternative therapy to treat EC. Here wedeveloped a DC-based vaccine by transfecting cordblood CD34+stem cell-derived DC with HPV18E7gene, observed its biological characteristics and theantigen-specific T-cell cytotoxicity on EC cells inducedby HPV18E7-DC in vitro. Our results showed that 1)HPV18E7 gene transfer did not change the typicalmorphology of mature DC, 2) the representativephenotypes of mature DC (CD80, CD86, and CD83)were highly expressed in HPV18E7- DC (81.6%, 80.5%,and 86.6%, respectively), 3) the expression level of18E7 protein in HPV18E7-DC was 47.5%, and 4) thespecific cytotoxicity against EC cells was significantlyhigher than that in controls (p<0.01). This studyindicates the possibility of a DC-based immunotherapyin HPV-associated EC.