Retinoblastoma vaccine

We have prepared a retinoblastoma autolyzed cell vaccine which seems to be the first of its kind. It can be used safely in rabbits and children with retinoblastoma. Its potency is enhanced by adjuvants. Its immunizing potency is demonstrated in rabbits. The direct FA technique pointed to the presence of specific antigen on the surface of the retinoblastoma cell. Its effectivity as an additional therapy in the management of retinoblastoma in man seems promising. The vista of the immunological approach in the treatment of retinoblastoma has cleared and widened by this vaccine. (Conclusion)

Metastatic tapioca iris melanoma.

A case of metastatic tapioca melanoma of the iris in a 12-year-old girl is reported. The patient had heterochromia, a red painful eye, and was treated for iritis with secondary glaucoma. In the course of 5 months iris lesions with the clinical appearance of tapioca pudding developed, and biopsy disclosed a melanoma. The eye was immediately enucleated, and pathological examination showed a melanoma with predominantly epithelioid-type cells which had infiltrated the angle, the posterior chamber, and the surgical wounds. Conjunctival extension was noted 10 months after enucleation, and regional lymph node metastases were found 4 months later. Previously reported cases are reviewed and compared with the present case.

Bacillus cereus endogenous panophthalmitis.

A case of severe suppurative endogenous panophthalmitis caused by Bacillus cereus resulted from intravenously administered medications. This is the first, to our knowledge, well-documented case of endogenous endophthalmitis associated with this organism. It is recommended that if on Gram's stain of the anterior chamber fluid, Gram-positive rods are seen, chloramphenicol should be administered in addition to penicillin because of the possibility of B cereus infection.

Immunotherapy in malignant melanomaa.

Accumlated evidence suggests that human neoplasms contain antigens that elicit humoral and cellular immunity in the immunocompetent host. A recent summary report showed that Stage II melanoma patients with metastases to regional lymph nodes had a lowered incidence of recurrence and a higher incidence of survival following surgery and postoperative BCG immunotherapy. To verify these findings, clinical trials are now under way in which we radomized melanoma patients into groups to compare treatment by surgery alone with surgery and BCG only, or surgery and BCG in combination with allogeneic melanoma cell vaccine. Serum samples from each patient are monitored by in vitro techniques to define those methods which best correlate to clinical course. Hopefully, such correlations can be used to monitor response to immunotherapy before disease is clinically apparent. Although immunotherapy does not cause regression of far advanced disease, it undoubtedly will be beneficial against subclinical, microscopic tumor.

Human tumor cells grown in fetal calf serum and human serum: influences on the tests for lymphocyte cytotoxicity, serum blocking and serum arming effects.

Peripheral blood lymphoid cells (PBL) from cancer patients and normal donors were tested against three melanoma cell lines grown in either 10% fetal calf serum (FCS) or 2.5-5% human AB serum in order to determine if the heterologous membrane (HM) antigen or other FCS antigens acquired from the bovine serum supplement could influence lymphoid cell-mediated cytotoxicity in vitro. FCS-grown melanoma cells were more susceptible than the AB serum-grown subline to lymphocyte cytotoxic effects. Arming effects by autologous sera on normal donor lymphocytes and to a lesser extent on lymphocytes of cancer patients were more pronounced on the FCS-grown M12 melanoma cells. This effect was abrogated when the cells were grown in human AB serum for at least 8 weeks. The non-HM tumor-associated antigen remained at the same original low level. Blocking effects were more evident on the AB-grown M14 melanoma line. These data suggest that the FCS antigens on the cell surface may have been responsible for the augmented PBL cytotoxicity. The anti-FCS antibody present in normal and cancer patients' blood induced an antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC). Elimination of arming activity against HM or other FCS antigens from AB-grown cells may have made the serum blocking factors more apparent. However, cytotoxicity against tumor cells by PBL from normal donors was still apparent even on the human serum-grown cells, suggesting that a different antigen-antibody system was also responsible for this "non-specific" activity.

Intralesional BCG in the treatment of metastatic malignant melanoma.

The therapeutic efficacy of intralesional BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin; one immunizing dose every 2 weeks for a minimum of five treatments) was studied in 19 melanoma patients. Of 15 patients evaluable for response, five experienced significant objective improvement (two complete and three partial remissions). Objective improvement was limited to those patients with dermal metastatic disease. In vitro cytotoxicity in the presence of patient's serum bore, on average, a relationship to the clinical disease. In certain individual cases, serum blocking and/or lymphocyte stimulation may have had prognostic significance.

Comparison of histocompatibility antigens on cultured human tumor cells and fibroblasts by quantitative antibody absorption and sensitivity to cell-mediated cytotoxicity.

Human tumor and febroblast tissue culture cells were compared to determine the suitability of fibroblasts as control cells in experiments on human tumor serology and cellular immunology. Fibroblasts expressed the same HL-A antigen profile as did melanoma cells. Furthermore, the quantitative expression of the determinants was similar on both cell types. In four of five pairs tested, the fibroblasts displayed similar sensitivity to effector cells generated by mixed lymphocyte culture as did the tumor cells from the same donor, but there were some differences in the effects of specific alloimmune effector cells at high and low effector-to-target ratios on the two types of target cells. Results indicated that fibroblasts are legitimate control target cells for studies in human tumor immunology, if screening assays are done to verify their antigenicity and sensitivity to cell-mediated cytolysis.

The use of viable frozen lymphocytes for studies in human tumor immunology.

Viable frozen lymphocytes displayed activity in blastogenesis assays that was indistinguishable from freshly prepared lymphoid cells. Similarly, cytotoxic activity of lymphocytes against melanoma target cells from melanoma patients was only slightly affected by the freezing procedure. Frozen lymphocytes provided a highly reproducible source of cells in these assays. The use of viable frozen peripheral blood lymphoid cells for the retrospective analysis of a cancer patient's immune response is described.