Production of functional dendritic cells from menstrual blood--a new dendritic cell source for immune therapy.

Dendritic cells (DCs) are the most professional antigen-presenting cells of the mammalian immune system. They are able to phagocytize, process antigen materials, and then present them to the surface of other cells including T lymphocytes in the immune system. These capabilities make DC therapy become a novel and promising immune-therapeutic approach for cancer treatment as well as for cancer vaccination. Many trials of DC therapy to treat cancers have been performed and have shown their application value. They involve harvesting monocytes or hematopoietic stem cells from a patient and processing them in the laboratory to produce DCs and then reintroduced into a patient in order to activate the immune system. DCs were successfully produced from peripheral, umbilical cord blood-derived monocytes or hematopoietic stem cells. In this research, we produced DCs from human menstrual blood-derived monocytes. Briefly, monocytes were isolated by FACS based on FSC vs. SSC plot from lysed menstrual blood. Obtained monocytes were induced into DCs by a two-step protocol. In the first step, monocytes were incubated in RPMI medium supplemented with 2% FBS, GM-CSF, and IL-4, followed by incubation in RPMI medium supplemented with α-TNF in the second step. Our data showed that induced monocytes had typical morphology of DCs, expressed HLA-DR, HLA-ABC, CD80 and CD86 markers, exhibited uptake of dextran-FITC, stimulated allogenic T cell proliferation, and released IL-12. These results demonstrated that menstrual blood can not only be a source of stromal stem cell but also DCs, which are a potential candidate for immune therapy.