Monocyte-Derived Dendritic Cell Activation Is Broadly Conserved Across Immune Phenotype-Specific Ovarian Tumor Lysate Pools, With Donor-Associated Variation in Response Magnitude.

Whether ex vivo monocyte-derived dendritic cell responses are shaped more by tumor immune context or donor-associated variation remains unclear. Monocyte-derived dendritic cells from nine healthy female donors were exposed for 8 h to three lysate pools generated from 27 high-grade serous ovarian tumors classified as immune-desert, immune-excluded, or immune-inflamed. Individual lysates showed phenotype-associated chemokine differences. The three pooled stimulation conditions elicited broadly conserved dendritic cell maturation responses and shared inflammatory transcriptional programs, with limited gene- and pathway-level differences. Permutational multivariate analysis attributed ≈58% of global transcriptional variance to donor identity (P = 0.001), whereas pooled lysate condition accounted for ≈4%, which was not significant (P = 0.756). Response magnitude varied continuously across donors and showed exploratory associations with baseline pathway activity in immature dendritic cells. Under the tested conditions, early monocyte-derived dendritic cell activation was broadly shared across the three lysate pools, while the transcriptional response magnitude was more strongly associated with donor identity.