Pulsing Dendritic Cells with Whole Tumor Cell Lysates

One of the strategies employed in immunotherapy for cancer is to use of ex vivo-generated dendritic cells (DC) pulsed with tumor antigens. Several approaches have been used to obtain and load tumor antigens in DC. One such technique is to use whole tumor cell lysate from one or more tumor cell lines of the tumor type to be treated. The advantage of applying this method is that it provides a large spectrum of tumor antigens. However, some considerations must be taken into account to obtain a lysate with appropriate biological activity, such as cell line harvest and the method to lyse the cells. In this chapter, we describe the steps to obtain whole tumor cell lysates from human tumor cell lines by repetitive freeze–thaw cycles in sufficient amount and quality to pulse DC.