By Genetic Engineering adn Biotechnology News –
Cancer immunotherapy transforms a patient’s immune cells into a “search‑and‑destroy” force against tumors. But many cancers learn to camouflage themselves from dendritic cells—the immune system’s scouts—making them harder to detect and target.
Dendritic cells normally collect tumor antigens and present them to T cells, which then attack cancer cells. Clinicians have tried to overcome tumor evasion by harvesting dendritic cells from patients, loading them with tumor antigens in the lab, and reinfusing them in an effort to train dendritic cells to better identify the tumor. Yet this approach is limited: lab‑grown dendritic cells often lack key activation molecules, and the antigens supplied ex vivo represent only a fraction of those present in tumors.
