Background: Prognosis in metastatic renal cell carcinoma is poor with a median survival of less than one year. Although renal cell carcinoma has shown some response to immunotherapy, the results of systemic administration of biologic response modifiers in disseminated renal cell carcinoma have been poor. Growing evidence suggests that active immunotherapy, particularly dendritic cells (DC) based vaccines, may prove to be a viable and clinically effective therapeutic option for patients with advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma.