Experimental melanoma vaccines.

There are several immunological implications for the feasibility of melanoma vaccines. Vaccines such as melanoma cell and cell-lysate preparations, chemically characterized and pure melanoma associated antigens (MAA), anti-idiotypic antibodies mimicking MAA, and vectors encoding the genes of MAA have been tested in early and advanced clinical trials. Some of these experimental vaccines have increased overall survival rate and increased disease-free interval rate in patients with melanoma.

Adjuvant effect of a Flt3 ligand (FL) gene-transduced xenogeneic cell line in a murine colon cancer model.

Background: Flt3 Ligand (FL) has been shown to elicit antitumor responses induced by tumor antigen stimulation. Allogeneic and xenogeneic cell lines transduced with cytokine genes may be used to augment the antitumor efficacy of tumor antigens.

Objectives: The objective was to evaluate the augmentation of tumor lysate-induced immunity by a more clinically applicable FL gene-transduced xenogeneic cell line in combination with interleukin-2 (IL-2) in a CC-36 murine colon cancer model.

Therapeutic effect of colon tumor cells expressing FLT-3 ligand plus systemic IL-2 in mice with syngeneic colon cancer.

Flt-3 ligand (FL) and interleukin-2 (IL-2) have been shown to enhance individually the antitumor response against several cancers. Therefore, treatment with a combination of FL gene-transduced tumor cell plus soluble IL-2 was studied in a murine colon adenocarcinoma model. The human full-length FL cDNA was cloned from FL-expressing cell line AML-193 by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).