PMC

Figure 1. Generation of dendritic cell-based cancer stem cell vaccines. Syngeneic mice were inoculated subcutaneously with D5 melanoma or SCC7 squamous cell carcinoma cells. Established tumors were harvested, dissociated into single cell suspensions, and stained using the ALDEFLUOR kit (StemCell Technologies, Vancouver, Canada). ALDH^bright and ALDH^dim cells were isolated by flow sorting. Bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (DCs) generated from naïve syngeneic mice were pulsed with whole tumor, ALDH^bright or ALDH^dim cell lysates. ALDH^bright cell lysate-pulsed DCs were used as cancer stem cell vaccines, whereas ALDH^dim and whole tumor cell lysate-pulsed DCs were used as control and conventional cancer vaccines, respectively.