Treatment of refractory recurrent malignant glioma with adoptive cellular immunotherapy: a case report

We report the successful treatment of a patient with recurrent malignant gl ioma with adoptive cellular immunotherapy. The patient is a young adult wit h recurrent progressive disease refractory to aggressive multi-modality the rapy including repetitive surgical resection, radiation, radiosurgery and c hemotherapy. He received multiple courses of local administration of autolo gous lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells in combination with a low dose of interleukin-2 (IL-2) through an Ommaya reservoir-catheter system. The s ide-effects of this treatment were limited and manageable. The patient achi eved a complete remission, as demonstrated by MRI and confirmed by glucose- positron emission tomography (PET) imaging 11 months after initiation of im mune therapy. Twenty-six months later, the patient is still in remission wi th improving performance status. Adoptive cellular immunotherapy utilizing autologous LAK cells with low dose IL-2 appears to be a safe and effective therapy for a subset of patients with primary, recurrent or progressive mal ignant glioma following conventional therapy. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ire land Ltd. All rights reserved.