Mass Manufacture of Immune Cells to Order
A mass infusion of immune cells is one strategy for dealing with a range of medical conditions - either by overwhelming the cause of the problem or by causing a specific response in existing immune system cells. But for this to become a reality, there must be a cost-effective way of manufacturing large numbers of immune cells: "Geron reports that dendritic cells (DCs) scalably manufactured from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) exhibit normal functions of naturally occurring human DCs found in the bloodstream. These findings support the use of hESC-derived DCs in therapeutic vaccine applications for cancer and other infectious diseases ... When a dendritic cell presents an antigen to a T cell in vivo, it stimulates the T cell to produce inflammatory cytokines and causes antigen-specific T-cell proliferation. ... Geron was able to show that immature hESC-derived DCs could take up, process, and present antigens. Following maturation in the manufacturing process, the DCs were also able to migrate, produce proinflammatory cytokines, and induce specific immune responses to both tumor and viral antigens in vitro."
Link: http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=57737055