Biological therapy of breast cancer

Abstract

Several studies indicate that patients with carcinoma of the breast remain reasonably immune competent throughout the natural history of their disease [45, 91]. Anti-tumor immunity is demonstrable in patients by a number of techniques. An in vitro immune reaction to tumor-associated antigens was demonstrated using the leukocyte migration inhibition (LMI) and the leukocyte adherence inhibition (LAI) assays, using as stimulants tumor cell extracts, soluble membrane extracts of MCF-7 cells (a breast cancer cell line), and soluble membrane extracts of biopsy-derived tumor tissue [15, 32, 75]. Several of these studies demonstrated blocking factors, presumably immune complexes, in the serum [83]. The T-antigen, a precursor of the M and N blood group antigens whose expression is masked on normal tissue, is expressed on nearly all breast carcinoma tissue. Patients also mount a strong cellular immune reaction to this antigen as demonstrated by both delayed hypersensitivity and in vitro LMI. The demonstration of delayed hyper-sensitivity to tumor-associated antigens has not been particularly useful clinically. However 85% of breast cancer patients had such a reaction to a crude membrane extract prepared from cultured MCF-7 breast tumor cells previously infected with vesicular stomatitis virus [3]. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.