Antibody response after vaccination with antigen-pulsed dendritic cells.
More news of progress on producing immunity against HER2. Again, the languages is somewhat difficult. Basically, I think this means that antigens should normally cause dendritic cells to produce antibodies, but cancer patients often don't produce an immune response to an antigen (anergy). The scientists took mouse dendritic cells, and among other things, fused HER2 to a bit of human DNA. A CpG is apparently a bit of DNA with C(ytosine) and G(uanine) linked together in a particular way. Anyway, the important thing is that it worked, but unfortunately the articile doesn't say how well. Still, it is a sign of progress and that is always good.
"Dendritic cells (DCs) are the most potent antigen-presenting cells of the immune system capable of initiating immune responses to antigens. It is also well documented that cancer patients often experience anergy against tumor antigens. In this study we selected the best protocol for inducing the production of antibodies against the HER2 oncoprotein using DCs to overcome anergy. Murine DCs were pulsed in vitro, using different protocols, with recombinant HER2 fused to a human Fc (in order to improve DC antigen uptake) and were used to vaccinate mice. The obtained results indicate that antigen-pulsed DCs can induce an antibody response and that adding CpG after antigen pulsing greatly increases anti-HER2 antibody production."