The effect of dendritic cells on proliferation and anti-tumor activity against leukemia of cytokine induced killer cells

Objective The purpose was to investigate the effect of dendritic cells(DC) on proliferation,phenotype,secretory cytokines and anti-tumor activity against leukemia cells of cytokine-induced killer cells(CIK).Methods DC and CIK were prepared from healthy human peripheral blood mononuclear cells.They were co-cultured.CIK cells were cultured alone as control.Increased number of cells were counted by tapan-blue staining,killing activity was detected by MTT assay,cells phenotypes were analyzed by flow cytometry,secretions of INF-γ,IL-12 were determined by ELISA.Results The proliferation activity of DC-CIK cells was significantly higher than that of CIK cells(P0.05);Under the same condition,the rate of CD3+CD56+ and CD3+CD8+ double positive cells in CIK cells were significantly enhanced by co-cultured with DC(P0.05);In DC-CIK cells,the level of IL-12,INF-γ in culture supernatants were all increased noticeably on day 3 compared to CIK cells which were cultured alone(P0.01,P0.05);At the effector-target ratio from 5:1 to 40:1,the anti-tumor effect of DC-CIK cells was much higher than that of CIK cells(P0.05),and this effect was positive related with the effector-target ratio.Conclusion The proliferation activity,anti-tumor effects against leukemia cells of DC-CIK cells were significantly higher than that of CIK cells.DC-CIK is promising as an immuno-therapeutic strategy for patients leukemia.