© 2002 American Thoracic Society
Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cell Proliferation to Heat Shock Protein–70 Derived from Autologous Lung CarcinomaChest Department, Department of Pathology, IRIBHN Statistical Unit, and Department of Thoracic Surgery, Erasme University Hospital, CUB Erasme, Brussels, Belgium Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Alain Michils, M.D., Chest Department, Erasme University Hospital, CUB Erasme, 808 Route de Lennik, B-1070 Brussels, Belgium. E-mail: amichils{at}ulb.ac.be In animals, tumor-derived heat shock proteins (HSP) induce immune-mediated protection against autologous cancer. We investigated whether HSP-70 derived from human lung carcinoma are also complexed to tumor-specific antigens. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells collected 10 days after surgery from patients with lung cancer were stimulated with HSP-70 purified from autologous and heterologous tumors. The stimulation index (SI) obtained when stimulating cells with autologous tumor-derived HSP-70 averaged 3.07 ± 0.75 in patients with lung cancer and 1.57 ± 0.33 in control subjects (p < 0.001 by analysis of variance). No significant stimulation was observed with HSP-70 derived either from the majority of heterologous tumors or from autologous tumor-free lung tissue. SI decreased from 3.59 ± 0.65 to 1.65 ± 0.38 in six patients tested again 3 months after surgery (p = 0.02 by Wilcoxon test for paired data). HSP-70 derived from lung carcinoma are shown to be associated with T cell antigens. The T cell reactivity appears transient and restricted to antigens complexed to HSP-70 derived from autologous tumors only. This suggests that the antigenicity of human lung tumors is unique, which may be crucial for the design of new vaccines.
Key Words: lung cancer • heat shock proteins (HSP-70) • lymphoblast transformation test • cancer immunotherapy This article has been cited by other articles:
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