Melanoma immunotherapy: dendritic cell vaccines

Abstract

This is a narrative review that shows accessible information to the scientific community about melanoma and immunotherapy. Dendritic cells have the ability to participate in innate and adaptive immunity, but are not unfamiliar to the immune evasion of tumors. Knowing the biology and role has led to generate in vitro several prospects of autologous cell vaccines against diverse types of cancer in humans and animal models. However, given the low efficiency they have shown, we must implement strategies to enhance their natural capacity either through the coexpression of key molecules to activate or reactivate the immune system, in combination with biosimilars or chemotherapeutic drugs. The action of natural products as alternative or adjuvant immunostimulant should not be ruled out. All types of immunotherapy should measure the impact of myeloid suppressor cells, which can attack the immune system and help tumor progression, respectively. This can reduce the activity of cellular vaccines and/or their combinations, that could be the difference between success or not of the immunotherapy. Although for melanoma there exist biosimilars approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), not all have the expected success. Therefore it is necessary to evaluate other strategies including cellular vaccines loaded with tumor antigenic peptides
expressed exclusively or antigens from tumor extracts and their respective adjuvants.