A Comparative Study on Anti-Tumor Immune Response of CIK Cells and DC-CIK Cells

Objective To compare the anti-tumor immune response effect of cytokine-induced killer(CIK) cells and dendritic cell(DC)-CIK cells.Methods DC and CIK cells were induced from peripheral blood mononuclear cells.DC and CIK cells were co-cultured,while CIK cells were cultured alone as controls.The killing activity was detected by MTT assay;immunophenotype changes were analyzed by flow cytometry;the IL-12,IFN-γ and TNF-αlevels of the cultured supernatants were detected by ELISA kits.Results The proliferation capability of DC-CIK cells was significantly higher than that of CIK cells.Under the same condition,the ratio of double positive cells such as CD3+CD8+,CD3+CD56+ in CIK cells was significantly enhanced by co-cultured with DC cells.The levels of IL-12,IFN-γ and TNF-α in cultured supernatants of DC-CIK cells increased noticeably on day 3 as compared with CIK cells cultured alone.The activity of DC-CIK cells against leukemia cells were much higher than that of CIK cells and this effect showed a positive correlation with the effector-target ratio.Conclusion The activity of DC-CIK against anti-tumor cells is significantly higher than that of CIK cells.