Chimaerism and erythroid marker expression after microinjection of human acute myeloid leukaemia cells into murine blastocysts.

It has been suggested that the embryonic microenvironment can control the survival and the transformed phenotype of tumour cells. Here, we addressed the hypothesis that the murine embryonic microenvironment can induce the differentiation of human tumour cells. To examine such interactions, we injected human leukaemic cells into preimplantation murine blastocysts at embryonic day 3.

Developmental potential of hematopoietic and neural stem cells: unique or all the same?

Like many other animals, mammals develop from fertilized oocytes - the ultimate stem cells. As embryogenesis proceeds, most cells lose developmental potential and eventually become restricted to a specific cell lineage. The result is the formation of a complete and structured mature organism with complex organs composed of a great variety of mature, mostly mitotically quiescent effector cells.

Specific peptide-mediated immunity against established melanoma tumors with dendritic cells requires IL-2 and fetal calf serum-free cell culture.

Melanoma, despite its aggressive growth characteristics, is an antigenic tumor expressing several characterized neo- and differentiation antigens. Dendritic cells (DC) when pulsed with defined peptides have been shown to effectively induce melanoma-specific T cell responses in humans and mice. These protect animals from challenge with melanoma, but so far have failed to induce significant tumor regressions.