Immunotherapy is the most important new form of cancer therapy and is currently revolutionizing cancer treatment. In immunotherapy, the aim is to increase the functionality of the patients own immune system to attack tumors. One example of cancer immunotherapy is cell therapy, where the patient's own immune cells are utilized as cancer therapeutics. Dendritic cell therapies (vaccines) are one such treatment modality. Although dendritic cell vaccines are safe and well tolerated, their clinical efficacy is not very impressive. Dendritic cell vaccines therefore clearly need further development. In this project, we will investigate whether dendritic cell vaccines can be optimized by modifying dendritic cell function in different ways. We utilize human dendritic cell cultures (vaccines) in our research. Our ultimate aim is to develop new types of dendritic cell vaccines that are more efficient towards tumors than current therapies.

2025

2026