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Fig. 1 | BMC Medicine

Fig. 1

From: Cancer immunotherapy: the beginning of the end of cancer?

Fig. 1

Dendritic cell (DC) based vaccines. CD34+ hematopoietic progenitor cells or monocytes are isolated from the patient’s peripheral blood by cytapheresis. Monocytes are cultured in the presence of Granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and IL-4 to induce differentiation into immature DCs, while CD34+ cells are differentiated when cultured in the presence of GM-CSF, Flt3 ligand and TNF-α. Immature DCs are then loaded with antigen in the form of proteins, peptides or tumor cells either with or following their maturation with proinflammatory cytokines. Once loaded with antigen, DCs can be re-introduced to the patient or frozen in aliquots and thawed before vaccination. (Adapted from [17])

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