Background and objective: Dendritic cells (DCs) are thought to be the most potent antigen-presenting cells (APC) and play a vital role in stimulating human immune response against cancer. At present, most data concerning the immuno-biological function of DCs are obtained from healthy donors. The information about the biological characteristics of DCs from patients is limited. In this study, the biological characteristics of monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MoDCs) from patients with ovarian cancer were investigated.
Methods: Monocytes were isolated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of eight epithelial ovarian cancer patients and 13 healthy women volunteers, cultured with interleukin 4 (IL-4) and granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), and stimulated with tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha). At seven days after induction, the morphologic characteristics of MoDCs were observed. The features of phenotype were analyzed using flow cytometry. The ability of MoDCs to stimulate proliferation of lymphocytes was tested by allogeneic mixed leukocytes reaction (MLR).
Results: Mature MoDCs with typical morphology were obtained after seven days of culture. MoDCs from both patients and healthy women expressed high levels of HLA-ABC (MHC-I), HLA-DR (MHC-II) and large amounts of CD86 and CD80. There was no significant differences between MoDCs from ovarian cancer women and healthy women in the mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of HLA-ABC, HLA-DR, CD86 and CD80 (p > 0.05). The MLR was significantly weaker in ovarian cancer patients than in healthy women (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: MoDCs from ovarian cancer patients may present lower capacity of stimulating proliferation of lymphocytes, indicating that the patients' MoDCs may have immunological function defect at certain extent.