The effects of T-cell conditioned media on the induction of dendritic cell (DC1) maturation for effective tumor immunotherapy

Nowadays, dendritic cells (DC) are used for tumor immunotherapy as they can induce immune responses against tumor cells. In this research, we comprehensively studied the maturation stimulus addition, PHA-activated T-cell (PHA-TCM) conditioned medium, autologous monocyte-conditioned medium (MCM) and TNF-α for their ability to promote uniformly mature dendritic cells that elicit T-cell responses. Plastic adherent monocytes were cultured with granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and interleukin-4 (IL-4) for five days and two days with monocyte-conditioned medium (MCM), tumor necrotizing factor-α (TNF-α) without TCM (PHA-activated T-cell conditioned medium). Phenotypic and functional analyses were carried out using anti-CD14, anti-CD80, anti-CD86, anti-CD83 monoclonal antibodies. Phagocytic activity, mixed lymphocyte reaction (MLR) and cytokine production were also evaluated. The generated dendritic cells had high expression of surface molecules i.e. CD80, CD83, CD86 and HLA-DR. Moreover, the cells had low phagocytic and high T-lymphocyte stimulating activities. Measurement of the produced cytokines showed the generation of type-1 dendritic cells (DC1) in the study. The findings indicated that more efficient maturation of dendritic cells could be achieved by the use of PHA-activated T-lymphocyte conditioned medium in the culture medium. The aforesaid supernatant can be used as a maturation factor for the production of efficient dendritic cells with the ability to be used for tumor immunotherapy. This conditioned medium can provide new strategies and evolve into more advance tools for the generation of dendritic cells in vitro for tumor immunotherapy