UMMS Affiliation
Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Medicine
Publication Date
2015-07-16
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Cancer Biology | Hematology | Medical Immunology | Neoplasms | Oncology | Therapeutics
Abstract
Relapsed, refractory lymphoma remains to be a challenge and lacks efficient treatment. Some tumor cells escape from treatment, become resistant to chemotherapeutic agents, and rapidly regenerate into large tumors. Lymphoma cells induce accumulation of Gr-1+CD11b+ myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in lymphatic organs and their vicinity. MDSCs enable tumor cells to escape from immune cells mediated surveillance and attack. Gemcitabine is a chemotherapeutic agent that eliminates both tumor cells and MDSCs, improving the immune environment favorable for subsequent treatment. We evaluated the effects of low dose gemcitabine combined with intra-tumorally delivered dendritic cells (DCs) for the treatment of A20 large-size lymphoma. We showed that MDSCs increased markedly in lymphoma-bearing mice, and that gemcitabine significantly increased the apoptosis of MDSCs. Treatment of lymphoma with either gemcitabine or intra-tumoral DCs alone could not inhibit tumor growth or rescue lymphoma-bearing mice. Treatment of lymphoma with small dose gemcitabine followed by intra-tumorally injected DCs significantly improved the efficacy of either individual treatment by reducing MDSCs, inducing onsite DCs maturation, eliminating tumor cells, inhibiting tumor growth and relapse, and extending the survival of the lymphoma-bearing mice, partly through the induction of the IFNgamma secreting cells and the activation of cytotoxic lymphocytes. We showed that NK cells and CD8+ T cells were the major effectors to mediate the inhibition of tumor growth. Thus, the observation that gemcitabine synergizes DCs mediated immunotherapy to improve the efficacy of large size lymphoma treatment provides an experimental basis for the combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy for the efficient treatment of relapsed or refractory lymphoma.
Keywords
Apoptosis, Cancer treatment, Flow cytometry, Lymphomas, NK cells, Spleen, T cells, Vaccination and immunization
Rights and Permissions
Copyright: © 2015 Zhu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
DOI of Published Version
10.1371/journal.pone.0132799
Source
PLoS One. 2015 Jul 16;10(7):e0132799. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0132799. eCollection 2015. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
PloS one
Related Resources
PubMed ID
26181041
Repository Citation
Zhu, Xue-Jun; Yang, Zhongfa; Zhou, Jin-Yong; Liu, Li; Sun, Xue-Mei; Fan, Zhen-Fang; Hu, Shou-You; Chen, Yu-Chao; Li, Wei-Xia; Cao, Meng; and Wang, Li-Xin, "Progression of Large Lymphoma Is Significantly Impeded with a Combination of Gemcitabine Chemotherapy and Dendritic Cells Intra-Tumor Vaccination" (2015). Open Access Articles. 2546.
https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/oapubs/2546
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Included in
Cancer Biology Commons, Hematology Commons, Medical Immunology Commons, Neoplasms Commons, Oncology Commons, Therapeutics Commons