Pilot study of the mechanism of action of preoperative trastuzumab in patients with primary operable breast tumors overexpressing HER2.

Purpose: To elucidate the mechanism by which trastuzumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody against HER2 with proven survival benefit in women with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, mediates its antitumor activity.

Experimental Design: A pilot study including 11 patients with HER2-positive tumors treated in a neo-adjuvant setting with trastuzumab was performed. Trastuzumab was administered i.

Reconstitution dynamics of plasmacytoid and myeloid dendritic cell precursors after allogeneic myeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Dendritic cells (DCs) are fundamental for immunity. We investigated reconstitution of plasmacytoid DC (PDC) and myeloid DC (My-DC) precursors in the first 2 months after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (Allo-HSCT). Circulating DCs were monitored from the earliest phase of hematopoietic reconstitution in 43 children given standard therapy to prevent graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and either treated or untreated with granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) after HSCT.

T-cell dynamics after high-dose chemotherapy in adults: elucidation of the elusive CD8+ subset reveals multiple homeostatic T-cell compartments with distinct implications for immune competence.

Recovery of total T cell numbers after in vivo T-cell depletion in humans is accompanied by complex perturbation within the CD8+ subset. We aimed to elucidate the reconstitution of CD8+ T cells by separate analysis of putative naïve CD95- CD28+, memory CD95+ CD28+ and CD28- T cell compartments after acute maximal depletion by high-dose chemotherapy (HD-ChT) in women with high-risk breast cancer. We found that recovery of putative naïve CD8+ CD95- CD28+ and CD4+ CD95- CD28+ T cells, was compatible with a thymus-dependent regenerative pathway since their recovery was slow and time-dependent, their values were tightly related to each other, and their reconstitution patterns were inversely related to age.