Therapeutic tumour vaccination with dendritic cells is designed to help the patient´s immune system to detect and destroy tumour cells. It is helpful and feasible at any stage of the disease. The earlier it is applied the better the chance of success, particularly in view of the prevention of relapse. Dendritic cell vaccination after complete tumour removal (“R0-resection”) is considered optimal. Vaccination provokes an effective immune response against tumour antigen and yields memory cells that maintain long lasting reactivity.

Up to now this therapy is usually applied when all other options have failed. But studies from the USA prove that for example in prostate cancer even 30% of patients with a poor prognosis survived for three years. They also experienced an improvement of their physical condition. Only 10% of the patients in the control group without vaccination survived in the same time span. A recent phase-III-study of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, too, documents positive prospect of success for tumour vaccination.

Unfortunately, immunotherapy has not yet entered into clinical routine but hitherto results are very encouraging. Positive effects were found in the majoritiy of studies. Most importantly, tumour vaccination does not have any adverse effects.

Conclusion: vaccination with dendritic cells against cancer is a safe and well-tolerated complementary treatment option in modern cancer therapy.