Researchers have thought pushing our own immune system to attack tumor cells. This phenomenon could be due to dendritic cells, recognized as triggers of the immune system.
Our immune system is capable of detecting tumor cells as foreign, because they relate to specific antigens on their surface. However, it is unable to destroy them. Researchers have therefore thought to stimulate our immune system by a "therapeutic vaccination". (This is to try to heal a person already sick, and not, as is the case of vaccination, to prevent any disease.)
There are over 30 years, Americans Ralph Steinman and Cohn Zanvil discovered a tumor vaccine based on dendritic cells, long underutilized because they are rare and difficult to isolate. They are present in lymphoid tissues (all organs where the lymphocytes), skin and mucous membranes, and recognize the intruder to the phagocyte. They present them to T cells which activate the immune response. It seems that the immune system does not attack the tumor cells could be due to the ability to prevent these dendritic cells activate T lymphocytes The idea of these researchers has been to inject patients with dendritic cells expressing tumor genes to help the body fight against cancer cells.
This approach yielded very encouraging results on mice. It was then tested in humans e. The first clinical trials were conducted in 1996 on patients with advanced disease. They have primarily served to see if the vaccine was harmful to humans or not.
However, this method has many disadvantages. Even though significant advances have taken place since, therapeutic vaccination is not on the eve of a widespread medical use.
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