Telomerase-pulsed dendritic cells: preclinical results and outcome of a clinical phase I/II trial in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

Objective: Therapeutic vaccination with dendritic cells (DC) showed promising results in first clinical trials in cases of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) could be a potential target because it is detectable in more than 85% of human tumors including RCC.

Design: 10 patients with progressive metastatic RCC were enrolled in a clinical phase I/II trial using DC pulsed with hTERT-peptide.