AuthOr’s VIew AuthOr’s VIew

Lymphomas are aggressive hematologi-cal malignancies and a high number of patients relapse and die following treat-ment. These cancers are typically poorly immunogenic, so therapeutic vaccina-tion strategies that incorporate adjuvants are required to enhance recognition and targeting of tumor cells by the immune system. We are investigating an adjuvant strategy in a mouse model of Myc onco-gene-driven B cell lymphoma involving the natural killer T (NKT) cell ligand α-galactosylceramide (α-GalCer), based on reports indicating that NKT cell stimulation generates potent immune responses against a range of malignancies including B-cell lymphomas.1,2 We adopted the approach of loading α-GalCer onto autologous tumors admin-istered as an irradiated cellular vaccine product. The rationale for this approach lies in the fact that the tumor cell vaccine acts as a source of potentially undefined tumor antigens, in addition to delivering α-GalCer, thus allowing for the genera-tion of innate immunity and impending long-term tumor-specific T-cell adaptive immunity, owing to the presence of a NKT cell adjuvant effect. This approach is ideally suited for many hematological malignancies, in which a large number of tumor cells can be easily obtained from the blood or bone marrow, immediately NKT cell adjuvants in therapeutic vaccines against hematological cancers stephen r. Mattarollo1,2, * and Mark J. smyth1,