Irradiation of necrotic tumor cells used to pulse dendritic cells (DCs) potentiates DC vaccine-induced anti-tumor immunity in a mouse model of high-grade glioma

Introduction The prognosis of high-grade glioma (HGG) is poor despite advancements in neurosurgery, radio-and chemotherapy. DC-based immunotherapy has emerged as a promising and feasible treatment approach due to its high degree of selectivity and its ability to induce an antigen-specific immune-memory response. Our research group investigates the efficacy of vaccinating both primary and relapsed HGG patients with DC vaccines pulsed with autologous whole tumor lysate. The method of preparing autologous whole tumor lysate is, however, not standardized yet with most groups applying multiple freeze-thaw (FT) cycles to induce necrosis of tumor cells. As irradiation is known to induce oxidation-associated molecular patterns (OAMPs) like oxidized or carbonylated proteins, potent enablers of danger signaling, we hypothesized that irradiation could increase the immunogenicity of FT-treated necrotic tumor cells used to pulse DC vaccines in the context of HGG.