Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Immunotherapy

Fusion induces tumour rejection

Nature volume 388, pages 626–627 (1997)Cite this article

The war on cancer has been waged with ever-increasing intensity over the past 30 years or so, using the weapons of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. But it has resulted, to date, in only limited advances. This has led to calls for the main directions of research to be realigned, from treatment to prevention1. But cancer therapy will be given a renewed impetus by a paper published in Nature Medicine by Kufe and co-workers2, who describe an elegant but simple strategy for the treatment of cancer using immunotherapy.

In a host of experiments over the past few years, dendritic cells have been used to process and present tumour antigens. This has generally been achieved by pulsing cultured dendritic cells with peptides eluted from class I MHC molecules7, tumour cell membranes7 or RNA derived from the neoplastic cells8. Kufe and co-workers have pursued the alternative strategy of introducing tumour antigens into dendritic cells in the most straightforward way — by fusing entire tumour cells with cultured dendritic cells.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Kufe and colleagues2 have developed a new strategy to activate the response of cytotoxic T. lymphocytes against tumour cells.

References

  1. Bailar, J. C. & Gornik, H. L. N. Engl. J. Med. 336, 1569–1574 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Gong, J., Chen, D., Kashiwaba, M. & Kufe, D. Nature Med. 3, 558–561 (1997).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Vlasveld, L. T. & Rankin, E. M. Cancer Treat. Rev. 20, 275–311 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Pardoll, D. M. Curr. Opin. Immunol. 5, 705–706 (1993).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Marland, G. et al. Stem Cells 14, 501–503 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Young, J. W. & Inaba, K. J. Exp. Med. 183, 7–11 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Flamand, V. et al. Eur. J. Immunol. 24, 605–610 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Boczkowski, D. et al. J. Exp. Med. 184, 465–472 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Guo, Y. et al. Science 263, 518–520 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bakkar, A. B. H. et al. Cancer Res. 55, 5330–5334 (1995).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Matzinger, P. Annu. Rev. Immunol. 12, 991–1045 (1994).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Ridge, J. P. et al. Science 271, 1723–1726 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ian Hart is in the Division of Oncology, United Medical Schools of Guys and St Thomas Hospitals, SE1 7EH, London, UK

    Ian Hart

  2. Camilo Colaco is at Quadrant Healthcare, Maris Lane, CB2 2SY, Cambridge, UK

    Camilo Colaco

Authors
  1. Ian Hart
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Camilo Colaco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Hart, I., Colaco, C. Fusion induces tumour rejection. Nature 388, 626–627 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/41662

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/41662

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing