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Invited Commentary
May 2014

Enhanced Intracellular Targeting of Tumor-Specific Antigens: You Can Lead a Horse to Water, But…

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
  • 2Operative Care Line, Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Houston, Texas
JAMA Surg. 2014;149(5):457-458. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2013.4163

Dendritic cell (DC)–based cancer vaccines can be prepared with relative ease and have been shown to induce therapeutic antitumor immune responses both in experimental models and, more recently, in the clinic for treatment of hormone-resistant prostate cancer and other malignant neoplasms.1 However, DC vaccination protocols are clearly not yet optimized2 and the generation of more effective regimens continues to be an area of active research. One of the key hurdles in developing an effective DC vaccine is poor access of tumor-specific antigen (TSA) to the intracellular human leukocyte antigen class I pathway, which is required to generate tumor-reactive cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs).3

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