1988 Volume 79 Issue 9 Pages 1497-1503
We studied property of lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cell activity and LAK generation in peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) isolated from patients with renal cell carcinoma. LAK cell activity was measured in a short-term 51Cr-release assay. The phenotype of the effectors and precursors of LAK cells was analyzed by serologic depletion assay with various monoclonal antibodies.
LAK cells could lyse not only fresh autologous tumor cells but also NK-resistant tumor cell lines, suggesting that LAK cells may have a rather broad specificity for tumor recognition. Treatment of LAK cells with each of monoclonal antibodies, such as OKT-3, OKT-8 or Leu-11b, could depress LAK cell activity, but its activity remained remarkably well. Patient's PBL were fractionated into low density fraction (LDF) and high density fraction (HDF) on percoll-discontinuous density gradient and each fraction was cultured with rIL-2 (2×10 lymphocytes/1000 IU·rU-2). LAK cells were generated from LDF within a day of culture. On the contrary, LAK cell activity of HDF was not significant on the first day of culture. However, it increased afterwards with incubation time till day 6. This result indicated that there was a significant time difference in kinetics of LAK generation between both fractions. Although treatment of PBL with OKT-3 or OKT-8 plus complement followed by culture with rIL-2 did not yield any suppressing effects on LAK cell generation, similar treatment with Leu-7 and Leu-11 together showed appreciable decrease in LAK cell activity.
These clinicolaboratory studies implies that LAK cells appear to be derived from phenotypically and functionally heterogeneous lymphoid cells in PBL, and the regimen of the treatment for renal cell carcinoma should be designed according to the property of LAK activity and LAK cell generation.
