Allogeneic vaccination for renal cell carcinoma: development and monitoring

An allogeneic tumor cell vaccine should display a natural immunogenicity th at allows the stimulation of tumor-reactive effector cells in patients, Fur thermore, the vaccine should express antigens that are shared by many tumor s to which patients are not tolerant. A variety of tumor peptides should be presented by different HLA-molecules due to limited MHC matching with reci pients and last but not least, the vaccine should have a strong growth pote ntial in vitro to allow adequate amounts of vaccine to be generated for lon g-term usage, In vitro and in situ studies with the renal cell carcinoma ce ll line RCC-26 demonstrate: (1) RCC-26 can induce complex allospecific resp onses through direct priming; (2) RCC-26 can not only reactivate cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) of a memory phenotype but they also can induce de novo tumor-antigen associated responses in normal donors; (3) these cells presen t epitopes restricted by several MHC molecules, allowing the vaccination of patients matched for different HLA alleles; and (4) they stimulate HLA-A*0 201-restricted T cells bearing characteristic T cell receptors (TCR), Thus, in addition to using limiting dilution killer and ELISPOT assays, molecula r tracking of a tumor-specific TCR can be used to judge the development of antitumor reactivity and vaccine efficiency.