Anti-Tumor Immunity to Patient-Derived Breast Cancer Cells by Vaccination with Interferon-Alpha-Conditioned Dendritic Cells (IFN-DC)

Breast cancer represents one of the leading causes of death among women. Surgery can be effective, but once breast cancer has metastasized, it becomes extremely difficult to treat. Conventional therapies are associated with substantial toxicity and poor efficacy due to tumor heterogeneity, treatment resistance and disease relapse. Moreover, immune checkpoint blockade appears to offer limited benefit in breast cancer. The poor tumor immunogenicity and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment result in scarce T-cell infiltration, leading to a low response rate. Thus, there is considerable interest in the development of improved active immunotherapies capable of sensitizing a patient's immune system against tumor cells.