ABSTRACT
Cancer immunotherapy is a promising strategy in cancer management, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This experimental study aimed to evaluate interleukin-10 (IL-10) as a biomarker for monitoring the response of tumor-derived autophagosomes vaccine in inducing antitumor immunity in HCC induced mice. It was conducted on 56 BALB/c mice; divided into 20 normal and 36, cancer induced with human liver cancer cell line (HepG2) cells. The latter group was subdivided into a positive control group (n=6) and a treated group (n=30), that was subdivided into 3 subgroups: (A) treated with dendritic cells (DC) vaccine only, (B) treated with vaccine named Dribbles only, and (C) treated with DC plus Dribbles. Serum IL-10 was assessed after immunotherapy. The mean percentage of tumor volume reduction in mice vaccinated by DC plus Dribbles was significantly superior to DC and Dribbles groups (p= 0.013, and p= 0.043, respectively). There was a statistically significant difference in IL-10 levels between different immunotherapy groups (p= 0.0003). As the mean IL-10 level was 19.50 pg/ml for the positive control group, 13 pg/ml for Dribbles group, 10 pg/ml for DCs group and 3.50 pg/ml for DCs plus Dribbles group. We conclude that DC-Dribbles vaccine has a remarkable efficacy superior to either Dribbles alone or DC alone in the decline of HCC development and survival improvement. IL-10 is a predictive biomarker for response after immunotherapy.
