Human dendritic cells in cancer

Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen-presenting cells, orchestrating innate and adaptive immunity during infections, autoimmune diseases, and malignancies. Since the discovery of DCs almost 50 years ago, our understanding of their biology in humans has increased substantially. Here, we review both antitumor and tolerogenic DC responses in cancer and discuss lineage-specific contributions by their functionally specialized subsets, including the conventional DC (cDC) subsets cDC1 and cDC2, the newly described DC3, and the plasmacytoid DCs (pDCs), focusing on the human setting. In addition, we review the lineage-unrestricted mature DCs enriched in immunoregulatory molecules (mregDC) state recently described across different human tumors.

Automated summary

In this review, the authors discuss the antitumor and tolerogenic responses of dendritic cells (DCs) in cancer, as well as the contributions of different subsets and the recently described mature DCs enriched in immunoregulatory molecules across human tumors.