摘要Cancer is considered as a devastating disease and a leading cause of deaths around the world.According to WHO,1.4 million cancer cases are seen in 2012.Cancer is usually asymptomatic at its initial stages,but it shows very pathetic signs and symptoms at advanced stages.There are various ways to diagnose cancer as taking images of body parts,some blood tests and histological study of body cells.The advanced malagnancies are not sensitive to therapies including surgery,chemotherapy and radiotherapy,and also accompanied by adverse effects,and also do not give the promising results.These adverse effects are usually toxic.Recent studies in immune therapy has shown non-toxdc and effective results given by dendritic cells(DCs).DCs are the potent antigen presenting cells and bave ability to stimulate strong immune response in the body by activating T cells.DCs can be prepared in vitro,can be combined with cytokines,peptides and different molecules to develop cancer vaccines.These cancer vaccines offer low toxicity and have ability to induce anticancer immune response.Under the banner of immunotherapy,the aim of these vaccines is to increase body's immune response against cancers.This article reviews the basic biology of dendritic cells,and future direction of DCs based cancer vaccines.