Mouse dendritic cell migration in abdominal lymph nodes by intraperitoneal administration.

Dendritic cell (DC) based immunotherapy is a promising approach for cancer treatment and has been approved in clinical settings for decades. Clinical trials have demonstrated relatively poor therapeutic efficacy. The efficacy of DC immunotherapy is strongly influenced by their ability to migrate to the draining lymph nodes (LNs). Therefore, it is critical to deliver DCs and monitor the in vivo biodistributions of DCs after administration. The purpose of this study is to determine whether a novel injection route of DCs improves DC migration to LNs, tissues, organs and lymphatics. In the present study, a modified method was investigated to acquire DCs from mouse bone marrow. Cultured antibody labeled DCs were analyzed by flow cytometry. India ink was used to visualize mouse abdominal LNs and PKH26 was utilized to label DCs for intraperitoneal (IP) injection, results were evaluated by histology. Our results showed that large amounts of DCs with a relatively high purity were acquired. IP injection of india ink marked the abdominal LNs and PKH26 labeled DCs showed IP was an effective administration route to increase the absorption of viable DCs, and different time points after IP inject showed no significant difference of the migrated DCs. The findings indicated that large amounts of high purity DCs can be acquired through our method and IP injection accelerates DCs migration to abdominal LNs, which can be directly translated to clinical settings, especially for abdominal cancers. This study makes a foundation for future researches of DC-based immunotherapy as a treatment modality against cancer.