PMID: 24355457Dec 21, 2013Paper

Immune modulations during chemoimmunotherapy & novel vaccine strategies--in metastatic melanoma and non small-cell lung cancer

Danish Medical Journal
Trine Zeeberg Iversen

Abstract

This thesis describes the treatment of metastatic melanoma (MM) and non small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) from an immunotherapeutic approach. The purpose of the first part of the thesis was to assess how treatment with Temozolomide (TMZ) chemotherapy affects the immune system in patients with metastatic MM. Our results showed that the number of T lymphocytes was significantly reduced after 3 treatment cycles. Furthermore, the induced lymphopenia was positive correlated to achievement of clinical benefit. We demonstrated that the proportion of CD4+ and Treg lymphocytes decreased whereas the CD8+ T cells increased. In particular, we demonstrated that mature CD8+ T cells increased during treatment. Analyses of peripheral blood before and after treatment showed that T cell responses against common viral epitopes were conserved despite chemotherapy. Surprisingly, we found a significant increase in T cell responses against well-known MM tumour specific antigens. Overall, we have verified that TMZ in addition to being an alkylating and cytotoxic chemotherapy, also possess immune modulatory effect in MM patients treated with standard dosage of TMZ. In the second part of the thesis we examined how treatment with Interferon alfa-2b and Inte...Continue Reading

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