[Immunogenic reactivity of CTLs induced by electrofusion cells of human dendritic cells and gastric cancer cells].

In tumor immunotherapy, there were several reports of attempts to induce anti-tumor immunity by fusion hybrid cells generated with dendritic and tumor cells. One of them reported that vaccination of hybrid cells resulted in a remarkable reduction of tumor cells in a lab mouse experiment. In our study, fusion cells were generated successfully with human matured dendritic and human gastric cancer cells by electrofusion technique and employed to induce CTLs. The evaluated fusion rate was 47.8% by FACS analysis. We tried to induce CTLs by co culture of effector and stimulator cells in the presence of IL-2, IL-7 and IL-12 for 4 weeks. Although it was not statistically significant in tumor cytotoxic assay, effector cells induced by the fusion cells as stimulator cells showed a few cytotoxic responses in an immunological tumor specific manner. Our data suggest that fusion hybrid cells may facilitate stimulation and expansion of tumor-specific T cells, but further investigation is required for clinical application of fusion cells in adoptive immunotherapy.