Fig. 3
Evaluation of lymphocyte response against ID8 cells in vitro. a Cytotoxic lymphocyte responses against ID8 cells following DC vaccination. Anti-tumor cytotoxic activity of in vitro-stimulated splenic lymphocytes was evaluated through a EUROPIUM assay at the indicated effector (E): target (T) ratios. rAAV-mSP17 DC vaccination increased ID8 cell lysis in comparison with rAAV DC (* = two-tailed T-test p = 0.03). Significantly higher rates of lysis were obtained following vaccination with rAAV-mSP17 DC + p38i (** = two-tailed T-test rAAV-mSP17 + p38i versus rAAV-mSP17 or rAAV p < 0.01). b DC vaccination promotes lymphocyte migration towards tumor cells. Splenocytes isolated from rAAV-mSP17 + p38i DC vaccinated (rAAV-mSP17 + p38i) or rAAV-DC vaccinated mice (rAAV-DC) were isolated and loaded in the upper chamber of a Transwell chemotaxis plate. The lower chambers were seeded with sub-confluent ID8 cells. After 4 h-incubation at 37 °C and 5% CO2, non-adherent cells in the lower chamber were counted and migration indexes were calculated. The histogram shows the migration indexes computed as the ratio between the number of migrated splenocytes in the presence of ID8 cells divided by the number of migrated splenocytes in the presence of culture medium alone (without tumor cells). The assay was run in triplicate and mean values ± SEM are shown (** = two-tailed T-test p < 0.01)