Quality of tumor lysates used for pulsing dendritic cells is influenced by the method used to harvest adherent tumor cells
2011

Impact of Harvesting Methods on Tumor Lysate Quality for Dendritic Cell Vaccination

Sample size: 12 publication Evidence: moderate

Author Information

Author(s): Gloria Isabelle Herzog, Solgi Ghasem, Denis S Wiegmann, Christian Nienhaus, Hubert Schrezenmeier, Tatjana Yildiz, Ramin Lotfi

Primary Institution: Institute of Transfusion Medicine, University of Ulm, Germany

Hypothesis

Trypsin may negatively impact the antigenicity of tumor lysate and its biological activity.

Conclusion

Using EDTA instead of trypsin for harvesting tumor cells preserves important proteins and enhances dendritic cell maturation.

Supporting Evidence

  • Lysates from tumor cells harvested by trypsin do not induce expression of maturation markers on DCs.
  • Lysates from tumor cells can induce expression of maturation markers on DCs if trypsin is replaced by EDTA.
  • Trypsin degrades proteins necessary for cell adherence and recognition of tumor cells.

Takeaway

If you use a special enzyme called trypsin to get cells from tumors, it can mess up the important parts needed to help our immune system fight cancer. Using a different method called EDTA works better.

Methodology

The study compared the effects of tumor lysates harvested using trypsin versus EDTA on dendritic cell maturation markers.

Limitations

The study focused only on colorectal tumor cell lines and may not be generalizable to other types of tumors.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1186/1756-0500-4-153

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