Abstract
On the basis of reports about the clinical application of Transfer Factor (TF) which was first reported by Lawrence in 1955, we investigated the possibility whether or not the immunological application of the TF for glioblastoma is available.
1. Microassay of cytotoxic activity of lymphocyte was performed in cases of glioblastoma pre and postoperatively. Tumor cells from a glioblastoma cell line and strain were used as target cells, and they were mixed with lymphocytes by Takasugi and Klein's method. Survival rate of the tumor cells were lower in 8 preoperative cases (11.0±17.4%) than in 10 postoperative cases within one month after removal of the tumor (78.5±13.9%).
2. The influence of TF of cytotoxic activity of lymphocyte was examined with the same method. The TF was obtained from cases of glioblastoma and control cases by Lawrence's method and was added to the mixed lymphocytes-tumor cells cultured. As the result, only the TF obtained from glioblastoma patients showed the augmentation effect for cytotoxic activity of lymphocyte in glioblastoma patients. In this group, the cytotoxic activity of lymphocyte was increased by TF about 43%, 32% (target cell; KS-1 cell, target cells/lymphocyte ratio; 1/250, 1/125), and 39%, 30% (target cell; GL-2 cell, target cells/lymphocytes ratio; 1/250, 1/125).
These observations suggest the possibility of immunological diagnosis of glioblastoma by cytotoxic activity test of lymphocytes utilizing glioblastoma cells and of immuno-therapy of glioblastoma by TF.
