Artificial antigen-presenting cells: artificial solutions for real diseases

Adoptive immunotherapy, which involves the transfer of autologous antigen-specific T cells generated ex vivo, is a promising strategy to treat a variety of life-threatening diseases. Unfortunately, current approaches for generating sufficient numbers of antigen-specific T cells lack the ability to serve as reproducible and economically viable methods. This has spurred the development of both cell- and non-cell-based artificial antigen-presenting cells to alleviate problems associated with peptide-loaded dendritic cells in current approaches to adoptive immunotherapy. Here, we review new strategies for the ex vivo generation of antigen-specific T cells and their clinical application. These new approaches have the potential to spearhead a new era of successful adoptive immunotherapy for cancer and infectious diseases.