Dear Colleagues,

Dendritic cells (DCs) represent the sentinels of the immune system and play an important role to link innate and adaptive immune responses. They are the most efficient antigen-presenting cells (APCs) of the immune system, executing both conventional presentation and cross-presentation, thereby effectively eliciting CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocyte activity. Although DCs are a rare tumor-infiltrating immune cell population, the central role of these cells in orchestrating tumor-specific immunity and tolerance is well documented and has been recently remarked by the clinical outcome of therapeutic employment of immune checkpoint inhibitors. Moreover, although not well characterized yet, emerging evidence is reported regarding the involvement of DCs in maintaining an inflammation status in respiratory chronic inflammatory diseases as COPD and asthma.

Therefore, given the easy manipulation of DCs in vivo and ex vivo, inducing a pro-inflammatory or tolerogenic/regulatory phenotype, DC-based vaccination can be a safe and beneficial immunotherapeutic approach in cancer, but also in autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases.

In line with these considerations, we would like to encourage the submission to this Special Issue of recent advances in the development of novel DC-based vaccines for the treatment of cancers, autoimmune diseases, and chronic inflammatory diseases. Identification of new signaling pathways and molecular mechanisms relevant in DC maturation, polarization, and activation control (including post-transcriptional and post-translational mechanisms) is welcome. Adding new information on these subjects may lead to a better understanding of the handling of DCs to improve the design and the efficiency of new therapeutic and prophylactic vaccination strategies in different diseases.

Dr. Jessica Dal Col
Prof. Natalia Belén Rumie Vittar
Dr. María Julia Lamberti
Guest Editors

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• dendritic cell vaccination
• inflammation
• antigen-specific response
• immune checkpoint
• signaling pathways
• antigen delivery
• anticancer immunity
• autoimmune disease
• chronic inflammatory disease