Shikonin-enhanced cell immunogenicity of tumor vaccine is mediated by the differential effects of DAMP components.

Background: The tumor cell lysate-pulsed, dendritic cell (DC)-based cancer vaccine approaches are being actively evaluated for application to cancer immunotherapy, hopefully at a personalized medicine base. There is apparently an emerging technical problem however, the lack of highly efficacious potency in activation of patient's DCs for T-cell priming and the associated process for presenting tumor immunogenicity.

Methods: One strategy to address this is to consider the manipulation of the tumor immunogenic cells death (ICD) complex ex-vivo for maximal activation of DC efficacy.