Improvement of Impaired Immunological Status of Patients with Various Types of Advanced Cancers by Autologous Immune Cell Therapy

Abstract

We evaluated the immunological status of patients with various solid tumors by flow cytometry of immune cell populations and their frequencies in peripheral blood samples. The change in immunological status was also analyzed in patients given autologous immune cell therapy, such as αβT cell, γδT cell, NK cell or DC vaccine therapy. The frequency of regulatory T-cells (Tregs) was shown to be high in patients with cancers of the lung (squamous carcinoma cells), head and neck, esophagus and uterus, although there were no significant differences in effector cell population or Th1/2 ratio between various types of cancers except for a few. The cellular immunological status was impaired in most patients with advanced solid tumors before immune cell therapy and the impaired T-cell immune status was restored by infusion of effector cells, such as αβT cells or γδT cells, although the number of NK cells in the peripheral blood did not always increase after autologous NK cell therapy. The concurrent αβT cell therapy and DC vaccine therapy could successfully increase the number of CD8(+) T-cells in the peripheral blood of patients with various types of cancers. Two or three injections of αβT cells could potentially reduce Tregs frequency prior to DC vaccine, as well as the concurrent αβT cell and DC vaccine therapy. However, an increase in the Tregs frequency was observed in some patients who received NK cell therapy. These findings suggest that it is necessary to include or combine certain types of immune cell therapy when the Tregs frequency of cancer patients is high before or after autologous immune cell therapy.

Keywords: Immune cell therapy; dendritic cell vaccine; effector cell therapy; regulatory T cell.