The successful treatment of
cancer with dendritic cell (DC)
tumor vaccine is highly dependent on the efficacy of antigen presentation and T cell activation. In the present study, a novel
vaccine of DCs fused with autologous
tumor cells was introduced, which had a marked ability to suppress head and neck
carcinoma. DCs generated from the bone marrow of mice were fused with an autologous tumor cell line using
polyethylene glycol (PEG). To observe the fused cells, confocal microscopy and FACS analysis were performed. Subsequently, the activation and proliferation of T cells, as well as animal experiments, were examined. The efficiency of DC/
tumor fusion was 18.03% and T cells were well-activated by the hybrids. The volumes of
tumors on the
tumor-bearing mice were controlled, survival time of
tumor-bearing mice was prolonged and the level of IFN-γ in serum was significantly increased compared with the control group and lysate-pulsed DC group. The results indicate that the DC/
tumor fusion
vaccine appears to be more effective than DCs pulsed with
tumor lysate for the treatment of head and neck
carcinoma, which may be useful in future clinical studies.