Autologous leukemia-specific T-cell-mediated lymphocytotoxicity in patients with acute myelogenous leukemia.

Short-term culture of acute myelogenous leukemia patient's remission lymphocytes with inactivated autologous leukemic blast cells plus allogeneic lymphocytes, generated effector T lymphocytes which were cytotoxic for the specific autologous blast cell in 11 of 14 patients studied. Experiments using Daudi and Molt 4 lymphoblastoid cell lines as third-party helper cell suggest that an HLA D locus incompatability is necessary to provide effective help in this system. Cold target inhibition experiments, crossover studies between pairs of patients, and experiments with allogeneic leukemic blast cells as priming stimulus suggest that the target antigen is only present on the specific autologous blast cell.