Isolation and/or preservation of dendritic cells for prostate cancer immunotherapy

Abstract

Methods and compositions for use of human dendritic cells to activate T cells for immunotherapeutic responses against primary and metastatic prostate cancer are disclosed. In one embodiment, human dendritic cells, after exposure to a prostate cancer antigen or specific antigenic peptide, are administered to a prostate cancer patient to activate the relevant T cell responses in vivo. In an alternate embodiment, human dendritic cells are exposed to a prostate cancer antigen or specific antigenic peptide in vitro and incubated or cultured with primed or unprimed T cells to activate the relevant T cell responses in vitro. The activated T cells are then administered to a prostate cancer patient. Methods and compositions for human dendritic cells with extended life span and cryopreserved dendritic cells are disclosed.

Description

1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to compositions and methods of isolating and / or preserving and using human dendritic cells for immunotherapy for cancer. In particular, the invention relates to methods for the use of dendritic cells for the activation and expansion of large numbers of prostate antigen specific T cells for use in adoptive cellular immunotherapy against prostate cancer, as well as methods for the use of prostate antigen pulsed dendritic cells as vaccines and / or immunotherapeutics to slow or inhibit the growth of primary or metastatic prostate cancer.2. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION2.1. Prostate Cancer[0002]Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer among men. In fact, prostate cancer is the most common (noncutaneous) cancer diagnosed in the American male and is steadily increasing, as a result of the increasing population of older men as well as greater awareness and earlier diagnosis of the disease. See, Wright et al., ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides methods and compositions for using dendritic cells to activate T cells for immunotherapy against prostate cancer. The dendritic cells are obtained from human donors and exposed to prostate cancer antigens or fragments in vitro before being administered to patients to activate relevant T cell responses. The activated T cells can then be administered to patients to elicit an immunotherapy growth-inhibiting response against the prostate cancer. The invention also provides compositions containing isolated human dendritic cells exposed to prostate cancer antigens.

Problems solved by technology

Thus, prostate cancer is also a major cause of suffering and of health care expenditures.

Cytotoxic chemotherapy is largely ineffective in treating prostate cancer.

A combination of agents is no more effective than a single agent, and the addition of chemotherapy to hormonal therapy does not improve survival.

Thus, in the course of a cancerous tumor, CTL eradicate cells expressing cancer associated or cancer specific antigens, thereby limiting the progression of tumor spread and disease development.

Various methods for immunotherapy of a number of particular cancers have been suggested; however, to date no one has developed any therapeutic method that successfully elicits an effective immunotherapeutic response against primary or metastatic prostate cancer.

Although monocytes and B cells have been shown to be competent APC, their antigen presenting capacities in vitro appear to be limited to the re-activation of previously sensitized T cells.

Hence, they are not capable of directly activating functionally naive or unprimed T cell populations.

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