Dendritic Cell Vaccine and Hypersensitivity

Abstract

In recent years, dendritic cells have been developed into vaccines for cancer treatment due to their ability to induce specific immune responses. The purposes of this narrative review were to explore the role of dendritic cells in hypersensitivity reactions and to evaluate the potential of delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) responses as indicators of the clinical efficacy of dendritic cell vaccines in cancer therapy. Relevant literature was retrieved from PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar using keywords including “dendritic cell vaccine,” “hypersensitivity,” “delayed-type hypersensitivity,” and “cancer immunotherapy,” with a focus on studies published between 1999 and 2025. Findings suggested that patients who exhibited a positive DTH response after receiving dendritic cell vaccines tended to show better therapeutic outcomes in various cancers, such as melanoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and lung cancer. DTH responses were associated with increased levels of antigen-specific T cells and cytokines, such as IL-2 and IFN-γ. However, conventional DTH measurements may lack precision, and histological methods have been proposed as a more accurate assessment approach. DTH thus holds promise as a predictive biomarker for the efficacy of dendritic cell vaccines in cancer treatment, but further research is needed to establish standardized and reliable evaluation protocols.