Therapeutic Dendritic Cell based therapy represents one of the most promising non toxic methods for the treatment of cancer. The main goal of this process is to stimulate the patient?s own immune system to combat cancer cells. Thus APCEDEN™ is a formulation prepared from the patient?s own monocytes loaded with tumor antigen which is injected back into the cancer patients, where surface expressed antigenic peptides are recognized by T lymphocytes. T lymphocytes are stimulated by Dendritic Cells to proliferate and differentiate into effecter cells that target and destroy tumor cells specifically. APCEDEN™ is a therapeutic cancer formulation that can be used as complementary to other types of treatment such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Dendritic Cells are antigen presenting cells and have high level of MHC, costimulatory molecules and cell adhesion molecules which are essential for antigen presentation. When DC in the body present MHC class I coupled antigens, T cells recognize and destroy the tumor cells. The MHC class II antigen complex on the APC cell surface is recognized by the T cell antigen receptor (TCR). The binding of the two is very specific and called as immunological synapse. The costimulatory receptor CD 28, binds DC cell adhesion molecules. The formation of TCR-MHC antigen complex sets off a cascade of events within the T cell resulting in gene activation and the ultimate result is cell proliferation. Certain Chemokines are released as a result of activation that play an important role in cell activation.