Baseline levels of CD8+ T cells against survivin and survivin-2B in the blood of lung cancer patients and cancer-free individuals.

Survivin and its variant survivin-2B have been considered as potential candidates for cancer immunotherapy. The magnitude however of spontaneously occurring CD8(+) T cells circulating precursor CTLs (pCTL), has never been evaluated. We set out to measure in 20 patients with lung carcinomas and 5 aged matched healthy male individuals (expressing HLA-A2 and/or -A24), the frequency of pCTLs specific for two naturally processed and presented peptides of survivin (LTLGEFLKL presented by HLA-A2) and survivin-2B (AYACNTSTL presented by HLA-A24) since these peptides are the only ones used in immunotherapeutic trials.