Abstract
A malnourished and immunodepressed condition is one significant feature of cancer cachexia. Active immunotherapy has been proven insufficient under such a circumstance. We examined whether adoptive immunotherapy with lymphokine activated killer cells (LAK cells) would be efficient in the case of cachexia using two nutritional model systems. In one group, C57BL/6 mice were given an ordinary diet as a normal nutrition model and in another group was fed with low protein and low fat diet as a cachexic model. Both groups of mice were inoculated subcutaneously with BL 6 melanoma cells to determine whether the tumor growth was dependent on the nutritional status. The findings showed that tumor growth was not dependent on host nutritional status.
In another experiment, splenocytes from normal mice were cultured with IL-2 for 4 days, and LAK cells were harvested. Pulmonary metastases were established by i. v inoculation of melanoma cells. Using this pulmonary metastatic model, we evaluated the effect of LAK adoptive immunotherapy on the inhibition of pulmonary metastases. LAK cells were injected intravenously with melanoma cells into the two groups of mice. Then the number of pulmonary metastatic nodules in the two groups was counted and compared with the number in the groups not treated with LAK cells. LAK adoptive immunotherapy could inhibit the pulmonary metastases and prolong the survival period in both control and cachexic models. These findings indicated that LAK adoptive immunotherapy would be efficient in the case of cachexia.
