Potent stimuli combined with lipopolysaccaride and IFNgamma may improve immunotherapy against HCC by increasing the maturation and subsequent immune response of the dendritic cells.

Dendritic cells (DCs)-based immunotherapy is a new strategy for cancer treatment and has been used in some clinical trials against cancer, including melanoma, and has shown promising results. However, the conventional protocol of DC immunotherapy may not be effective for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) because of impaired DC maturation in HCC patients. In order to induce sufficient maturation on HCC derived DCs, we tested various stimuli such as tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha, lipopolysaccharide (LPS), interferon (IFN)gamma and CD40-ligand. In stimulating with LPS + IFNgamma, DCs of HCC patients expressed significantly high levels of CD86 (p < 0.05) and produced high levels of IL-12 as compared to DCs stimulated with TNFalpha alone. Moreover, it showed better ability to stimulate allogeneic mixed lymphocyte reaction. It concluded that LPS and IFNgamma was the best combination of stimuli for induction of sufficient maturation on DCs derived from HCC.