Since the first use of aminopterin to treat childhood leukemia by Sidney Farber almost 50 years ago, chemotherapy for leukemias and solid tumors has come a long way (1). With combinations of several drugs in the 1960s and early 1970s and the development of repetitive cycle protocols, long-term remission of some cancers has been achieved in a considerable number of patients. Dose-intensification...

Greater than 90% of the human population acquire Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in infancy and retain a lifelong latent infection without any clinical consequences. Nevertheless EBV has been identified as the causal agent of infectious mononucleosis, and is associated with several tumours including endemic Burkitt's lymphoma and B cell lymphomas in immunosupressed patients. B cells infected with EBV ...

To investigate the mechanisms underlying superantigen (SAg) stimulation, we analyzed the effect of SAg on monocyte responses with or without lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Addition of gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) to unstimulated cultures induced a marked increase in the number of CD80(+) monocytes, which was inhibited by LPS through the action of interleukin-10. However, CD80(+) monocytes began to i...

Dendritic cells (DC) are antigen presenting cells of hemopoietic origin, uniquely well-equipped to activate naive T cells. 1 Evidence also exists however, for DC tolerogenicity.2 During primary activation, mature T cells change from an activation-induced cell death (AICD) -resistant to an AICD-sensitive phenotype.3 The complete molecular basis for this transition remains to be determined, but C...

The murine melanoma cell line B16.F10 (H-2b) was used to study specific T cell responses that reject tumors. Stable B16 transfectants were established that express viral Ags, either the hepatitis B surface Ag (HBsAg) or the large tumor Ag (T-Ag) of SV40. B16 cells and their transfected sublines were CD40+ CD44+ but expressed no (or low levels of the) costimulator molecules CD154 (CD40L), CD48, ...

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable B-cell malignancy, requiring new therapeutic strategies. We have found that synthetic alkyl-lysophospholipids (ALPs) edelfosine and perifosine induced apoptosis in MM cell lines and patient MM cells, whereas normal B and T lymphocytes were spared. ALPs induced recruitment of Fas/CD95 death receptor, Fas-associated death domain-containing protein, and procas...

CTL and NK cells use two distinct cytocidal pathways: 1) perforin and granzyme based and 2) CD95L/CD95 mediated. The former requires perforin expression by the effectors (CTL or NK), whereas the latter requires CD95 (Fas/APO-1) expression by the target. We have investigated how these two factors contribute to tumor immune surveillance by studying the immunity of perforin-deficient mice against ...