Personalized cancer vaccine strategy elicits polyfunctional T cells and demonstrates clinical benefits in ovarian cancer.

T cells are important for controlling ovarian cancer (OC). We previously demonstrated that combinatorial use of a personalized whole-tumor lysate-pulsed dendritic cell vaccine (OCDC), bevacizumab (Bev), and cyclophosphamide (Cy) elicited neoantigen-specific T cells and prolonged OC survival. Here, we hypothesize that adding acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) and low-dose interleukin (IL)-2 would increase the vaccine efficacy in a recurrent advanced OC phase I trial (NCT01132014).

Personalized cancer vaccine effectively mobilizes antitumor T cell immunity in ovarian cancer.

We conducted a pilot clinical trial testing a personalized vaccine generated by autologous dendritic cells (DCs) pulsed with oxidized autologous whole-tumor cell lysate (OCDC), which was injected intranodally in platinum-treated, immunotherapy-naïve, recurrent ovarian cancer patients. OCDC was administered alone (cohort 1, = 5), in combination with bevacizumab (cohort 2, = 10), or bevacizumab plus low-dose intravenous cyclophosphamide (cohort 3, = 10) until disease progression or vaccine exhaustion. A total of 392 vaccine doses were administered without serious adverse events.

A dendritic cell vaccine pulsed with autologous hypochlorous acid-oxidized ovarian cancer lysate primes effective broad antitumor immunity: from bench to bedside.

Purpose: Whole tumor lysates are promising antigen sources for dendritic cell (DC) therapy as they contain many relevant immunogenic epitopes to help prevent tumor escape. Two common methods of tumor lysate preparations are freeze-thaw processing and UVB irradiation to induce necrosis and apoptosis, respectively. Hypochlorous acid (HOCl) oxidation is a new method for inducing primary necrosis and enhancing the immunogenicity of tumor cells.

Bow hunter's syndrome caused by accessory cervical ossification: posterolateral decompression and the use of intraoperative Doppler ultrasonography.

Background: Bow hunter's syndrome refers to symptomatic vertebrobasilar insufficiency provoked by physiologic head rotation.

Case Description: We report a unique case of bow hunter's syndrome caused by an accessory cervical ossification and the first use of intraoperative Doppler ultrasonography directly upon the vertebral artery during the surgical repair. After a traumatic motor-vehicle collision, the patient developed recurrent syncopal episodes when he turned his head abruptly to the right.

Fetal therapy: state of the art.

Objective: To review our experience with the use of sonography in evaluating potential candidates for in utero fetal therapy performed at The Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Methods: This review article was designed to discuss open hysterotomy for the 4 fetal surgical procedures that have been performed at our institution. The procedures included surgical repair of myelomeningocele, resection of sacrococcygeal teratoma in fetuses with nonimmune hydrops, resection of an enlarging congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation that is not amenable to thoracoamniotic shunting, and tracheal clip occlusion for severe left congenital diaphragmatic hernia.