Highly immunogenic regressor tumor cells can prevent development of postsurgical tumor immunity.

Highly immunogenic malignant cells form small tumors that spontaneously regress after initial growth because the tumor induces specific immunity. However, variants may arise during the initial tumor growth that lose antigens, grow progressively, often become the predominant tumor population, and eventually kill the host. These progressively growing variants usually have not lost all tumor antigens and remain susceptible to rejection by T cells specific for antigens present on the parental tumor and retained by the progressively growing variants. Thus, it would seem logical for therapy to actively immunize with the parental highly immunogenic tumor (or sublines made similarly immunogenic by tumor heterogenization) after maximal surgical removal of the growing tumor. However, the present findings suggest that such a strategy may be ineffective and have adverse effects: the parental highly immunogenic tumor cells, either remaining or reintroduced, may perpetuate unresponsiveness to both the parental and the variant tumor. These findings suggest that unless tumor-induced suppression is first abrogated, immunization with highly immunogenic tumor cells may be counterproductive because this maneuver may maintain preexisting immune suppression and prevent development of postsurgical tumor immunity.