A novel metastatic animal model reflecting the clinical appearance of human neuroblastoma: growth arrest of orthotopic tumors by natural, cytotoxic human immunoglobulin M antibodies.

Neuroblastoma (NB), the most common extracranial solid tumor in childhood is associated with poor prognosis in patients with advanced tumor stages. Natural human cytotoxic anti-NB IgM antibodies present in the serum of healthy humans are discussed as a potential novel immunotherapeutic regimen against human NB because these antibodies have been shown to affect growth arrest of solid s.c. xenografts of human NB in nude rats. Subcutaneously induced tumors, however, exhibit a different growth pattern compared with the typical growth pattern of NB tumors in humans. Therefore, we developed in this study a novel metastatic tumor model in nude rats that reflects the clinical appearance of human NB and used this model to study the therapeutic efficacy of human anti-NB IgM. Intra-aortal injection of human NB cells in nude rats resulted in the development of large invasive adrenal gland tumors and micrometastases in the liver and bones. Apparently, adrenal glands provide most favorable growth conditions for human NB cells, as documented by the preferential and rapid growth of NB cells in this location. We studied three different treatment protocols of natural human anti-NB IgM. Anti-NB IgM completely inhibited tumor formation and metastases when injected simultaneously with human LAN-1 NB cells (P < 0.05). When antibody treatment was started 6 days after tumor cell injection (i.e., micrometastatic stage), tumor growth was inhibited by 90% (P < 0.05). An anti-NB IgM therapy directed against established tumors (14 days after tumor cell injection) shrank adrenal gland tumors by 90% (P < 0.05). Analysis of the tumors revealed both complement activation and an induction of apoptosis as two independent mechanisms of antitumor function. This study strongly suggests human anti-NB IgM antibodies as new agents for the therapy of neuroblastoma.