Because DC/CCL21 vaccines have been tested in clinical trials for patients with lung cancer and melanoma, our studies provide the foundation for future trials of DC/CCL21 vaccination in patients receiving pre-transplant conditioning regimens.
Following stimulation of lung cancer cell lines with CCL21, the expression of the epithelial marker E‑cadherin was downregulated, and the mesenchymal markers Vimentin/Slug and extracellular signal‑regulated kinase (ERK) were upregulated.
Taken together, our results provide evidence that CCL21/CCR7 induce VEGF-D up-regulation and promote lymphangiogenesis via ERK/Akt pathway in lung cancer.
These results have provided the rationale to generate a clinical grade adenoviral vector encoding CCL-21 for ex vivo transduction of human DC in order to assess intratumoral administration in late stage human lung cancer.