Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0027819 (neuroblastoma)
 27,800 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Previous studies demonstrated that ex vivo IL-2- activated PBSC could generate cytotoxic effectors without impairing haematopoietic reconstitution. Clinical experience and previous studies indicated that children with solid tumours could benefit from high-dose chemotherapy with immune modulation. We studied the generation of cytotoxic effectors from growth-factor +/- chemotherapy-mobilised PBSC from 10 patients (five adults and five children) with different solid tumours. Cells were placed in culture in serum-free culture medium supplemented with IL-2 1000 U/ml +/- IL-12 for 1, 2, 4 or 7 days. Anti-tumour cytotoxicity was tested against K562, Daudi and two neuroblastoma cell lines (Gau, NB91). Cultured adult PBSC in the presence of IL-2 (1000 U/ml) showed marked cytotoxicity against all the cell lines tested from day 1. At day 2, with an E:T ratio of 25:1, cytotoxicity was 53% +/- 10.4, 63.2% +/- 23.8, 38% +/- 9.1, and 39% +/- 15.7 against K562, Daudi, Gau and NB91, respectively. Cytotoxic activity of child PBSC was significantly lower (P < 0.05) and was displayed after longer culture times (day 4). No difference was found in the phenotype analysis of lymphoid subsets before and after IL-2 activation between adult and child PBSC. Haematological properties of the graft were not significantly impaired by IL-2 activation.
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PMID:In vitro generation of cytotoxic effectors activated by interleukin 2 (IL-2): comparison of autologous peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) from adults and children. 1147 46

alpha-Galactosylceramide (alphaGalCer) stimulates NKT cells and has antitumor activity in mice. Murine NKT cells may directly kill tumor cells and induce NK cell cytotoxicity, but the mechanisms are not well defined. Newly developed human CD1d/alphaGalCer tetrameric complexes were used to obtain highly purified human alphaGalCer-reactive NKT cell lines (>99%), and the mechanisms of NKT cell cytotoxicity and activation of NK cells were investigated. Human NKT cells were cytotoxic against CD1d(-) neuroblastoma cells only when they were rendered CD1d(+) by transfection and pulsed with alphaGalCer. Four other CD1d(-) tumor cell lines of diverse origin were resistant to NKT cells, whereas Jurkat and U937 leukemia cell lines, which are constitutively CD1d(+), were killed. Killing of the latter was greatly augmented in the presence of alphaGalCer. Upon human CD1d/alphaGalCer recognition, NKT cells induced potent cytotoxicity of NK cells against CD1d(-) neuroblastoma cell lines that were not killed directly by NKT cells. NK cell activation depended upon NKT cell production of IL-2, and was enhanced by secretion of IFN-gamma. These data demonstrate that cytotoxicity of human NKT cells can be CD1d and ligand dependent, and that TCR-stimulated NKT cells produce IL-2 that is required to induce NK cell cytotoxicity. Thus, NKT cells can mediate potent antitumor activity both directly by targeting CD1d and indirectly by activating NK cells.
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PMID:Human NKT cells mediate antitumor cytotoxicity directly by recognizing target cell CD1d with bound ligand or indirectly by producing IL-2 to activate NK cells. 1154 96

We evaluated the efficiency/tolerability of and the immunological changes induced by the adoptive immunotherapy (AIT) with IL-2-activated killer cells, and preparation of native cytokines from swine spleen (PSS) in treatment of 20 patients with advanced cancer (10 patients with primary lung cancer; 3 with metastatic melanoma; 2 with advanced neuroblastoma; 2 with ovarian cancer; renal cancer; gastric adenocarcinoma; and colorectal cancer). The partial/minor response of duration period 2-10 months was observed in 20% of patients. 2/4 patients, who underwent partial surgical tumor resection and following AIT course, sustained the event-free survival for more than 24 months. The response to the therapy was revealed in 4/10 patients with lung cancer, 2/2 patients with neuroblastoma, of whom each had ovarian and colorectal cancers. The evaluation of a dose of infused LAKcells as well as combined i.v./local (endobronchial or endoperitoneal) LAK administration were necessary to assure positive response in patients. The cytokine and/or side effects were moderate and the combined LAK-PSS infusions were generally well tolerated by the patients. The treatment was followed by activation of the patient immune system that included: (i) rebound in amount of peripheral blood lymphocytes; (ii) gain in amount of CD3(+) T cells and those CD4(+) helper/inducer; (iii) enchantment of lymphocyte proliferation and cytokine production (IL-2, IL-1, TNF-alpha). Being injected to patients in combination with LAK cells, cytokines related to PSS action and/or those, either exogenous or secondary, and released by in vitro and in vivo, activated lymphocytes and could cause the therapeutic effects.
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PMID:IL-2-Activated Killer Cells and Native Cytokines in Treatment of Patients with Advanced Cancer. 1268 71

A common strategy in immunotherapy of cancer is the induction of an increased immunogenicity of syngeneic malignancies. A novel approach to achieve this goal is the targeting of cytokines into the tumor microenvironment with antibody-cytokine fusion proteins, called immunocytokines. This report summarizes therapeutic efficacy and immune mechanisms involved in targeting IL-2 to syngeneic tumors and describes their extended use as a synergistic treatment modality for cancer vaccines and antiangiogenesis. Treatment of established melanoma and colon carcinoma metastases with IL-2 immunocytokines resulted in eradication of disease, followed by a vaccination effect protecting mice from lethal challenges with wild-type tumor cells. In a syngeneic neuroblastoma model, targeted IL-2 elicited effective antitumor responses mediated by NK cells in the absence of a T-cell memory. Interestingly, targeted IL-2 was effective in amplification of memory immune responses previously induced by cancer vaccines. Furthermore, a synergistic effect achieved by combining targeted IL-2-immunotherapy with an antiangiogenic inhibitor of integrin alpha(v)beta(3) extends the potential of this immunotherapeutic strategy in combination with antiangiogenesis as demonstrated in three syngeneic tumor models. Based on these findings, targeted IL-2 may provide an effective tool for the adjuvant treatment of cancer either applied as a single strategy or in combination with cancer vaccines and antiangiogenic strategies.
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PMID:What to do with targeted IL-2. 1286 55

We evaluated recurrent NXS2 neuroblastoma tumors that developed following NK- or T-cell-mediated immunotherapy in tumor-bearing mice. Recurrent tumors developed following an NK-dependent antitumor response using a suboptimal dose of hu14.18-IL2, a humanized IL-2 immunocytokine targeted to the GD(2)-ganglioside. This treatment initially induced complete resolution of measurable tumor in the majority of mice, followed, however, by delayed tumor recurrence in some mice. These recurrent NXS2 tumors revealed markedly enhanced (> fivefold) MHC class I antigen expression when compared with NXS2 tumors growing in PBS-treated control mice. A similar level of enhanced MHC class I antigen-expression could be induced on NXS2 cells in vitro by culturing with interferon gamma, and was associated with reduced susceptibility to both NK-cell-mediated tumor cell lysis and antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity in vitro. In contrast, Flt3-ligand treatment of NXS2-bearing mice induced a protective T-cell-dependent antitumor memory response. Recurrent NXS2 tumors that developed following Flt3-L therapy revealed a decreased expression of MHC class I antigens. While NXS2 tumors are susceptible to in vivo destruction following either hu14.18-IL2 or Flt3-ligand immunotherapies, these results suggest that some tumor cells may be selected to survive and progress by expressing either higher or lower levels of MHC class I antigen in order to resist either NK- or T-cell-mediated antitumor responses, respectively.
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PMID:NXS2 murine neuroblastomas express increased levels of MHC class I antigens upon recurrence following NK-dependent immunotherapy. 1450 25

EMD-273063 is an antibody/cytokine fusion protein comprised of a humanized version of the murine anti-GD2 antibody 14.18 coupled to two molecules of IL-2. It is being developed by EMD Lexigen Research Center Corp (a subsidiary of Merck KGaA) and its sister company, EMD Pharmaceuticals Inc, for the potential treatment of neuroblastoma and melanoma, for which it is in preclinical and phase I clinical trials, respectively.
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PMID:Technology evaluation: EMD-273063, EMD Lexigen. 1553 58

The authors retrospectively analyzed the long-term outcome of 67 patients over 1 year of age at diagnosis with high-risk neuroblastoma (stage 4 or stage 3 with N-myc amplification) who were treated with megatherapy and stem cell rescue from 1984 to 1998. Median age at transplant was 4 years (range 1.6-15 years). The source of cells was peripheral stem cells in 29 and bone marrow in 38 patients. In 12 patients, an in vitro purging of bone marrow harvest was performed. Most patients were conditioned with melphalan, BCNU, and VM-26. After transplant 19 patients received complementary treatment with IL-2 (16) or 13-cis-retinoic acid (3). Six patients (8%) died from transplant-related toxicity and 39 from disease progression. Three patients were alive with active disease at the time of analysis. Nineteen patients are alive and disease-free at a median follow-up of 104 months. Five-year event-free survival is 0.30. Survival of patients who received a purged graft was not significantly better than the rest. Post-transplant complementary treatment significantly improved overall and event-free survival (p = .01 and p = .04, respectively).
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PMID:Long-term results of high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell rescue for high-risk neuroblastoma patients: a report of the Spanish working party for BMT in children (Getmon). 1555 13

The induction of tumor protective immunity against neuroblastoma remains a major challenge for active immunotherapy. Fractalkine is a unique Th1 CX3C chemokine known to induce adhesion and migration of leukocytes mediated by both, a membrane-bound and soluble form, respectively. Here, we tested the hypothesis that chemokine gene therapy with fractalkine (FKN) induces an effective anti-neuroblastoma immune response amplified by targeted IL-2 using the anti-GD2 antibody ch14.18 fused with IL-2 (ch14.18-IL-2). For this purpose, NXS2 cells were genetically engineered to stably produce murine FKN (NXS2-FKN). Transcription and expression of the mFKN gene in tumor tissue of mice inoculated with NXS2-FKN cells were demonstrated in vivo. Importantly, mFKN exhibited a reduction in primary tumor growth and spontaneous liver metastases in syngenic A/J mice. This effect was boosted by targeted IL-2 using small non-curative doses of ch14-18-IL-2. The amplification of the FKN induced immune response was specific, since a non-specific antibody-IL-2 fusion protein ch225-IL-2 was ineffective. In summary, we demonstrated for the first time that chemokine gene therapy is amplified by targeted IL-2 suggesting a combination of both strategies as an adjuvant therapy for neuroblastoma.
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PMID:Fractalkine gene therapy for neuroblastoma is more effective in combination with targeted IL-2. 1595 76

Human neuroblastomas possess several mechanisms of self-defense that may confer an ability to resist apoptosis and contribute to the observed difficulty in treating these tumors in the clinical setting. These molecular alterations may include defects in proapoptotic genes as well as the overexpression of prosurvival factors, such as Akt among others. As a key regulator of the turnover of proteins that modulate the cell cycle and mechanisms of apoptosis, the proteasome could serve as an important target for the treatment of neuroblastoma. The present studies provide the first evidence that bortezomib, a newly approved inhibitor of proteasome function, inhibits phosphorylation of Akt, induces the translocation of proapoptotic Bid, and potently enhances the apoptosis of murine neuroblastoma tumor cells in vitro. Furthermore, in that inhibitors of the Akt pathway can sensitize otherwise resistant TBJ/Neuro-2a cells to apoptosis induced by IFN-gamma plus TNF-alpha, we hypothesized that bortezomib also could sensitize these cells to IFN-gamma plus TNF-alpha. We demonstrate for the first time that bortezomib not only up-regulates the expression of receptors for IFN-gamma and TNF-alpha on both TBJ neuroblastoma and EOMA endothelial cell lines, but also markedly enhances the sensitivity of these cells to apoptosis induced by IFN-gamma plus TNF-alpha in vitro. Furthermore, bortezomib enhances the in vivo antitumor efficacy of IFN-gamma/TNF-alpha-inducing cytokines, including both IL-2 and IL-12 in mice bearing well-established primary and/or metastatic TBJ neuroblastoma tumors. Collectively, these studies suggest that bortezomib could be used therapeutically to enhance the proapoptotic and overall antitumor activity of systemic cytokine therapy in children with advanced neuroblastoma.
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PMID:Proteasome inhibition to maximize the apoptotic potential of cytokine therapy for murine neuroblastoma tumors. 1667 Mar 42

Therapeutic treatment with hu14.18-IL-2 immunocytokine (IC) or Flt3-L (FL) protein is initially effective at resolving established intradermal NXS2 neuroblastoma tumors in mice. However, many treated animals develop recurrent disease. We previously found that tumors recurring following natural killer (NK) mediated IC treatment show augmented MHC class I expression, while the tumors that recurred following T cell dependent Flt3-L treatment exhibited decreased MHC class I expression. We hypothesized that this divergent MHC modulation on recurrent tumors was due to therapy-specific immunoediting. We further postulated that combining IC and Flt3-L treatments might decrease the likelihood of recurrent disease by preventing MHC modulation as a mechanism for immune escape. We now report that combinatorial treatment of FL plus hu14.18-IL-2 IC provides greater antitumor benefit than treatment with either alone, suppressing development of recurrent disease. We administered FL by gene therapy using a clinically relevant approach: hydrodynamic limb vein (HLV) delivery of DNA for transgene expression by myofibers. Delivery of FL DNA by HLV injection in mice resulted in systemic expression of >10 ng/ml of FL in blood at day 3, and promoted up to a fourfold and tenfold increase in splenic NK and dendritic cells (DCs), respectively. Furthermore, the combination of FL gene therapy plus suboptimal IC treatment induced a greater expansion in the absolute number of splenic NK and DCs than achieved by individual component treatments. Mice that received combined FL gene therapy plus IC exhibited complete and durable resolution of established NXS2 tumors, and demonstrated protection from subsequent rechallenge with NXS2 tumor.
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PMID:Flt3-L gene therapy enhances immunocytokine-mediated antitumor effects and induces long-term memory. 1742 68


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