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Background: Kidney transplantation is the therapeutic of choice for patients with kidney failure. While immunosuppressive drugs can control graft rejection, their use is associated with increased infections and cancer, and they do not effectively control chronic graft rejection. Cell therapy is an attractive strategy to minimize the use of pharmacological drugs., Methods: We recently developed a protocol to generate human monocyte-derived autologous tolerogenic dendritic cells (ATDCs) from healthy volunteers. Herein, we transferred the ATDC manufacturing protocol to a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP)-compliant facility. Furthermore, we compared the phenotype and in vitro functions of ATDCs generated from patients with end-stage renal disease to those generated from healthy volunteers., Results: We describe the critical steps for GMP-compliant production of ATDCs and define the quality criteria required to allow release of the cell products. Furthermore, we showed that ATDCs generated from healthy volunteers and patients with kidney failure display the same tolerogenic profile based on their phenotype, resistance to maturation, and ability to modulate T-cell responses., Conclusions: Together, these results allowed us to define the production process and the quality criteria for the release of ATDCs before their administration in patients receiving a kidney transplant., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2020 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

In BRAF wild type advanced melanoma, immune checkpoint blockers such as anti-PD1 (anti-programmed cell death 1) are usually continued beyond progression for a hypothetical rare further response. Chemotherapy as a second-line option is considered ineffective by many practitioners based on historical data. Continuing anti-PD1 beyond progression has a high health-economic impact and is not recommended by the FDA. This study aimed to describe the efficacy and survival of advanced melanoma patients who received second-line (or more) chemotherapy after immunotherapy failure.This was a retrospective single center study conducted in a French University Hospital during an 11-month period. All advanced melanoma patients treated with chemotherapy after immunotherapy failure were included.Eighteen patients were analyzed. Therapeutic response to chemotherapy was evaluable in 16 patients: partial response was achieved in 3/16 (19%), stable disease in 1/16 (6%) and progressive disease in 12/16 (75%). Median overall survival from chemotherapy start was 12 months. Median progression-free survival was 5.4 months. The 6-month overall survival rate was 81% and the 6-month progression-free survival rate was 40%.Although the disease control rate with chemotherapy was low (25%), survival data in our study are far superior to those previously published. This could be linked to a high proportion of patients treated with anti-PD1 just prior to chemotherapy, which may suggest a potential synergy between immunotherapy and chemotherapy.