Immuno-kinetics of immunotherapy: dosing with DCs

Abstract

Therapeutic vaccines play a large role in the cast of immunotherapies that are now an essential component in most cancer treatment regimes. The complexity of the immune response and the ability of the tumour to mount a counter-offensive to this response have made it difficult to predict who will respond to what treatments, and for clinicians to optimise treatment strategies for individual patients. In this paper, we present a mathematical model that captures the dynamics of the adaptive response to an autologous whole-cell cancer vaccine, without some of the complexities of previous models that incorporate delays. Model simulations are compared to published experimental and clinical data, and used to discuss possible improvements to vaccine design.