Athymic mouse model of a human T-cell tumor.

Because of the large number of different immunoconjugates which can be produced from monoclonal antibody-directed anti-cancer therapy, it would be useful to have in vivo tumor models to compare such preparations. Although historically human leukemias-lymphomas have been difficult to establish in athymic mice we have succeeded in establishing human T-cell tumors from primary MOLT-4 cultures in 290 of 353 animals and have successfully transferred tumors in 42 of 45 animals during ten serial passages. The potential utility of this model for testing immunoconjugates of murine monoclonal antibody T101 have been confirmed by: (a) in all 148 tumors sampled including all passaged tumors the human T-cell antigen, T65, was expressed in a manner identical to that of cultured cells; (b) 111In-T101 was concentrated preferentially in the tumor; and (c) T101 injected by both the i.p. and i.v. routes bound to tumor and induced antigenic modulation to the same extent as that observed previously in vitro and in human studies.