Compositions and methods are provided for converting the predominant circulating classical monocytes to a non-classical and/or intermediate monocyte phenotype through cytokine stimulation via, for example, macrophage colony-stimulating factor. Once cultured into dendritic cells, these non-classical and/or intermediate monocyte derived cells have increased costimulatory molecule expression, which leads to improved immune and clinical responses in cancer patients receiving dendritic cell vaccination and other immunotherapies. In addition, assays and diagnostic and theranostic methods are provided herein that relate to the discoveries that, prior to treatment, intermediate (CD14+CD16+) and non-classical (CD14dimCD16+) monocytes are increased more than two-fold in patients who later had complete responses to dendritic cell therapy or DC vaccination.

The invention relates to methods, peptides, nucleic acids and cells for use in isolating and expanding human T cell populations in an antigen-specific manner for immunodiagnostic or therapeutic purposes. The invention also relates to professional antigen presenting cells derived from pluripotent human stem cells, and to customizable antigen presentation by the antigen presenting cells.

The present invention discloses a mesenchymal stem cell treated by at least two of cytokines IL4, IL21, and IL27, an exosome and use thereof. The present invention relates to the technical field of biomedicine. The treatment way is as follows: treating and stimulating a mesenchymal stem cell by stages with a complete medium containing the cytokine composition to obtain a capacitated mesenchymal stem cell; and then replacing with a basal medium for starvation treatment to obtain the capacitated exosome. The mesenchymal stem cell obtained after being pretreated with the cytokine composition and an exosome thereof provided in the present invention can exert a stronger immune modulating effect and thus, can be used for the treatment of immune diseases better.

The current disclosure provides for techniques and approaches for the generation of autologous mutant neoantigen-specific, TCR-engineered T cells used for adoptive transfer in treatment of cancer patients. Also provided are surrogate cancer cells, which is a personalized cell system that can be used for vaccination and TCR discovery in cancer patients.

The invention provides methods of inducing immunological tolerance to a transplanted cellular population or organ by creating and administering a veto-like cell originating from the identical genetic background of the organ donor. In one embodiment said artificially generated veto cell is a dendritic cell population possessing molecules associated with tolerance induced in natural anatomical locations such as the placenta, the testis, or the eye. In one embodiment dendritic cells resistant to maturation are generated from pluripotent stem cells that have been gene edited to lack genes needed for acquisition of antigen presenting properties such as relB, NF-kappa B and transporter associated protein. In another embodiment immature dendritic cells are gene edited/transfected to express tolerance associated molecules such as interleukin-10, interleukin-35, Fas ligand, TRAIL, TGF-beta, HLA-G and arginase.

Disclosed are means, methods and compositions of matter useful for stimulation of immunity to tumor antigens through isolation of dendritic cell exosomes from dendritic cells that have been pulsed with said tumor antigens and/or pulsed dendritic cells that have been gene silenced/gene edited for immune suppressive genes. In one embodiment said tumor antigen is survivin and said immune suppressive genes include interleukin-10, interleukin-35, TGF-beta and interleukin-13. In some embodiments dendritic cells are further transfected with immune stimulatory genes including interleukin-2, interleukin12, interleukin-15 and interleukin-18.

Disclosed herein are compositions for use in and methods of producing HDAC11-activated macrophages. Also disclosed herein are methods of treating inflammation and providing adaptive cell therapy comprising HDAC11-activated M2 macrophages.

The present invention provides a method of manufacturing memory T cells from naive T cells and a composition containing the memory T cells manufactured by the method. The present invention is a manufacturing method of memory T cells including an activation step of activating naive T cells with a differentiation-inducing factor and a memory-formation step of culturing the activated T cells in the absence of a differentiation-inducing factor after the activation step to manufacture memory T cells, in which the activated T cells are cultured in a hypoxic environment in the memory-formation step. The present invention is also a memory T cell-containing composition in which a total number of living cells of stem cell memory T cells, central memory T cells, and effector memory T cells is equal to or more than 20% of a total number of living cells contained in the composition.

A method of expanding double negative T cells in culture is described. The method comprises (a) providing a starting sample comprising DN T cells or precursors thereof; (b) substantially depleting CD8.sup.+ and CD4.sup.+ T cells from the starting sample; (c) culturing the sample from step (b) with an immobilized T cell mitogen in a culture medium comprising an agent that can stimulate DN T cell growth (d) washing the cells obtained in step (c) and resuspending in a culture medium comprising the agent without the T cell mitogen; and (e) washing the cells obtained in step (d) and resuspending in a culture medium comprising the agent and a soluble T cell mitogen. The DN T cells obtained by the method are useful in a variety of applications including the treatment of cancer, infectious diseases, graft versus host disease and autoimmune disease.

There is provided a method of loading antigen in a dendritic cell for antigen presentation, the method comprising: modifying a pluripotent stem cell with a nucleic acid molecule encoding an antigen or one or more immunogenic epitopes thereof; inducing the pluripotent stem cell to differentiate into a dendritic cell that expresses and presents the antigen or the one or more immunogenic epitopes thereof. Dendritic cells, vaccines and methods of using the dendritic cells and vaccines are also provided.