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Abstract Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) remains among the leading cancers in the world. It represents an important health problem since its persistent high mortality rates. It is closely related to several risk factors such as tobacco consumption, betel nut chewing, adiation exposure, and long-term immunosuppression. In addition, some genetic disorders are linked to increased incidence of OSCC. The traditional therapies are surgery and radiation with adjuvant chemotherapy have shown benefits in patients with early OSCC, albeit no improvement was observed in advanced disease stages. The need for developing new treatment strategies towards OSCC eradication with fewer side effects and no relapse was the motive in this study to examine effect of dendritic cells (DCs), tumor cell lysate loaded dendritic cell vaccine (TCL-DC) and chemoradiation (CR) on tumor immune microenvironment. Dendritic cells are potent antigen-presenting cells that have been shown to have significant antitumor effects in vitro and in vivo. However, the therapeutic efficacy of DCs as an immunotherapeutic treatment has been limited by both immunologic tolerance and active immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment. To address this problem, the present study examined the ability of concurrent systemic chemotherapy and local, fractionated radiation to augment intratumoral DC injections in a hamster buccal pouch (HBP) model of OSCC. |