Multiple Myeloma and Dendritic Cell Vaccines

Abstract

Despite advances in the treatment of multiple myeloma, most of patients after its completion retain minimal residual disease (MRD-positive status), which increases the risk of relapse. Antigen-specific immunotherapy of tumors contributes to improving the clinical outcomes in such patients by the killing of cancer drug resistant clone of tumor cells without any damage to normal tissues. Dendritic cells (DC) are antigen-presenting elements with the main function of antigen-capturing, processing, and presenting them to naive T-lymphocytes for the activation of immune response against the captured antigen. The unique ability of DC to activate T-helpers and cytotoxic T-lymphocytes as well as to target thereby the immune reactions was used in developing DC-based tumor immunotherapy. This approach suggests the implementation of the so-called ‘DC-vaccines’. The clinical trials performed by now also showed the results of using DC-vaccines in various tumors including hematological ones. On the whole, according to the studies DC-vaccines are characterized by satisfactory safety profile, moderate immunological activity, and moderate clinical efficacy. The present review provides the results of clinical trials dealing with the use of DC-based vaccines in multiple myeloma patients. Besides, the potentials of improving the clinical efficacy of this therapy are discussed.