Whole tumor antigen vaccination using dendritic cells: Comparison of RNA electroporation and pulsing with UV-irradiated tumor cells

Fabian Benencia¹^,2^,3 , Maria C Courrèges¹ and George Coukos¹^,2

¹Center for Research on Early Detection and Cure of Ovarian Cancer, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

²Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

³Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine and Biomedical Engineering Program, Russ College of Engineering and Technology, University of Ohio, Athens, OH, USA

author email corresponding author email

Journal of Translational Medicine 2008, 6:21doi:10.1186/1479-5876-6-21


Published:	29 April 2008

Abstract

Because of the lack of full characterization of tumor associated antigens for solid tumors, whole antigen use is a convenient approach to tumor vaccination. Tumor RNA and apoptotic tumor cells have been used as a source of whole tumor antigen to prepare dendritic cell (DC) based tumor vaccines, but their efficacy has not been directly compared. Here we compare directly RNA electroporation and pulsing of DCs with whole tumor cells killed by ultraviolet (UV) B radiation using a convenient tumor model expressing human papilloma virus (HPV) E6 and E7 oncogenes. Although both approaches led to DCs presenting tumor antigen, electroporation with tumor cell total RNA induced a significantly higher frequency of tumor-reactive IFN-gamma secreting T cells, and E7-specific CD8+ lymphocytes compared to pulsing with UV-irradiated tumor cells. DCs electroporated with tumor cell RNA induced a larger tumor infiltration by T cells and produced a significantly stronger delay in tumor growth compared to DCs pulsed with UV-irradiated tumor cells. We conclude that electroporation with whole tumor cell RNA and pulsing with UV-irradiated tumor cells are both effective in eliciting antitumor immune response, but RNA electroporation results in more potent tumor vaccination under the examined experimental conditions.