Epstein-Barr virus(EBV),a potential oncogenic herpesvirus,has been found to be associated with several malignancies.Its critical to elicit cellular immunity of the body to fight against EBV-associated tumor development.Using dendritic cells(DCs)loaded with latent membrane protein 2A(LMP2A)to elicit T cell response against tumor may be one of the most direct and safest immunotherapy approaches.The present study aimed to develop DCs-based cancer vaccine (DC loaded with LMP2A protein)and study its biological characteristics and immune functions.Purified LMP2A protein was extracted from a cell line L929/LMP2A stably expressing LMP2A.LMP2A could be loaded on DCs with no significant changes of the DC surface markers and cytomorphology.The percentage of DCs loaded with LMP2A was above 80%.LMP2A-loaded DCs markedly enhanced the proliferation of antigen-specific CD8+ T and CD4+ T cells by 3H-TdR incorporation assay.Besides, the specific cytotoxicity of the CTLs against LMP2A target cells was also significantly increased.These results indicated that DC-based vaccine loaded with virus antigen could elicit potent CTL response and provide a foundation for further study on the DC-based immunotherapy for nasopharygeal carcinoma and other EBV associated tumors.