Hi, Gary. I'm not sure that what you are suggesting would be applicable for widespread immunisation against acute (as against chronic) viral infections. Bioreactors could grow huge quantities of virus-infected cells exhibiting the viral epitopes against which the dendrocytes are sensitised (although the genetic changes caused by the virus might cause problems with cell viability and replication). To produce a dendrocytic vaccine they would then need to be lysed (no problem there) and then used to sensitise dendrocytes. If (as is now the case with DCVax-L) the resultant sensitised dendrocytes were to be used for 1 person only, the dendrocytes would be from the intended recipient so that their survival would not be a problem after being given back to the recipient.
If, however, the object were to immunise populations against viruses, the current system is not a practical way of doing it as the sensitised dendrocytes would not be from the recipient and so would engender an immunological response by the recipient against these "non-self" dendrocytes. Hopefully the injected dendrocytes would survive long enough to programme significant numbers of the recipient's T-cells to initiate the desired immunological response against the virus-infected cells etc. but in the process they would have programmed the recipients' own "self" dendrocytes against the injected "non-self" dendrocytes. This would mean that after one course of immunisation further injections of "non-self" dendrocytes would face the almost certain risk of instant destruction irrespective of what they were sensitised against - virus or malignancy. In short, immunisation using dendrocytes from somebody other than the intended recipient would be a "one-off" treatment.
For immunisation with an "all-cancer" vaccine (as I originally suggested) this might work as (hopefully) the one immunisation would cover all (or nearly all) known malignant epitopes from existing malignancies and so (hopefully) only one short course of treatment would be needed in a lifetime. However, as we have all recently seen, many viruses (especially respiratory ones) evolve rapidly so that current vaccines are rendered quickly useless and multiple courses of updated versions are needed to maintain immunity. After one course of a dendrocytic vaccine which uses dendrocytes from anybody other than the recipient, theoretically all further courses of any dendrocytic vaccine would be rendered useless unless the subsequent dendrocytic vaccine used dendrocytes from the recipient.
Best wishes.
AI
