Achievement

IGERT Fellow, Kevin Nikitczuk has been working on the ability of DCs to skew an immune response to facilitate either the growth or remission of cancer is evident by DC interactions with cytotoxic, helper and regulatory T cells. Using a polymer delivery system and co-encapsulating a tumor associated antigen and a potent adjuvant we induced antigen specific immunogenicity, as demonstrated by the DC subsets generated and their interactions with T cells. As a result of the polymer delivery system, detailed cellular analysis of DCs revealed phenotypic characteristics of a Th1 response, as indicated by elevated levels of CD80, CD86, MHCII and Il-12. When delivered as a therapy in tumor bearing mice, antigen specific T cell responses are observed and tumor growth is significantly delayed and/or abrogated. This multifaceted delivery system provides a step towards engineering cancer therapies that both increase the immunogenicity of the tumor cells and inhibit immune suppression.