Durable remission of renal cell carcinoma in conjuncture with graft versus host disease following allogeneic stem cell transplantation and donor lymphocyte infusion: rule or exception?

Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloSCT) followed by donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI) can be applied as immunotherapeutic intervention to treat malignant diseases. Here, we describe a patient with progressive metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who was treated with T cell depleted non-myeloablative alloSCT and DLI resulting in disease regression accompanied by extensive graft versus host disease (GVHD). We characterized the specificity of this immune response, and detected a dominant T cell population recognizing a novel minor histocompatibility antigen (MiHA) designated LB-FUCA2-1V.

The simultaneous ex vivo detection of low-frequency antigen-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses using overlapping peptide pools.

The ability to measure antigen-specific T cells at the single-cell level by intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) is a promising immunomonitoring tool and is extensively applied in the evaluation of immunotherapy of cancer. The protocols used to detect antigen-specific CD8+ T-cell responses generally work for the detection of antigen-specific T cells in samples that have undergone at least one round of in vitro pre-stimulation. Application of a common protocol but now using long peptides as antigens was not suitable to simultaneously detect antigen-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cells directly ex vivo in cryopreserved samples.

Rapid determination of fibronectin by laser nephelometry. Fibronectin concentrations is plasma in human diseases, I.

Fibronectin (Synonyms: cold-insoluble globulin, antigelatin factor) is a cell surface glycoprotein. It has been shown that remarkably large amounts of fibronectin are present in human plasma. Owing to the difficult and expensive radioimmunoassays, only a few reports on the relation of fibronectin and human diseases have so far been published.

The influence of different isolation procedures and the use of target cells from melanoma cell lines and short-term cultures on the non-specific cytotoxic effects of lymphocytes from healthy donors.

In parallel studies the effects of FHL1 and PNL on plated melanoma cells from cell lines and short-term cultures were compared. FHL showed more frequent and also stronger cytotoxic and/or growth-inhibiting effects than PNL. On melanoma target cells from cell lines both FHL and PNL showed more frequent and stronger cytotoxic and/or growth-inhibiting effects than on melanoma target cells from short-term cultures.