Attenuated expression of A20 markedly increases the efficacy of double-stranded RNA-activated dendritic cells as an anti-cancer vaccine.

A20 is a zinc finger protein with ubiquitin-modifying activity. A20 has been described as negatively regulating signaling induced by the TNF receptor and TLR family in a number of cell types, including mouse bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (DCs). However, the expression and effect of A20 in activated human monocyte-derived DCs have not been previously evaluated. We report that DCs activated with the TLR3 ligand poly(I:C) up-regulate A20. Down-regulating A20 demonstrated its role in the functional activation of DCs. A20 down-regulated DCs showed higher activation of the transcription factors NF-kappaB and activator protein-1, which resulted in increased and sustained production of IL-6, IL-10, and IL-12p70. We additionally silenced the immunosuppressive cytokine IL-10 and demonstrated that IL-10 inhibits T cell proliferation. We further demonstrated that A20 down-regulated DCs skew naive CD4+ T cells toward IFN-gamma producing Th1 cells, a process which is dependent on IL-12p70 and which is unaffected by IL-10. Furthermore, A20 and/or IL-10 down-regulated DCs had an enhanced capacity to prime Melan-A/MART-1 specific CD8+ T cells. Finally, we demonstrated that potent T cell stimulatory DCs are generated by the simultaneous delivery of poly(I:C12U), A20, or A20/IL-10 small interfering RNA and Ag-encoding mRNA, introducing a one step approach to improve DC-based vaccines. Together these findings demonstrate that A20 negatively regulates NF-kappaB and activator protein-1 in DCs and that down-regulation of A20 results in DCs with enhanced T cell stimulatory capacity.