Effects of interleukin-12 on the induction of cytotoxic T lymphocytes from the regional lymph node lymphocytes of patients with lung adenocarcinoma.

Lung cancer-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) were induced by repeated stimulations of regional lymph node lymphocytes (RLNL) in lung cancer patients with either autologous or HLA-A-locus-matched tumor cells. To investigate the effect of interleukin-12 (IL-12), IL-12 was added during the stimulation of RLNL from HLA A24/adenocarcinoma patients with either autologous tumor cells or HLA A24-positive adenocarcinoma cells (PC-9) in combination with, or instead of interleukin-2 (IL-2), and then the cytotoxic activity, cytokine production and populations of the lymphocyte subsets were examined. The addition of IL-12, or the substitution of IL-2 by IL-12 was found to enhance the cytotoxic activity and the cytokine production (IFN-gamma, GM-CSF) of the CTL as compared with IL-2 alone. The cytotoxic activity and cytokine production were both partially inhibited by anti-MHC-class I monoclonal antibody. The CTL thus induced by IL-12 had a higher proportion of CD3+/CD56+ cells than the CTL induced with IL-2 alone. The positively selected CD8+/CD56- lymphocytes showed PC-9-specific cytotoxic activity, because the population did not show any cytotoxicity to K562 or A549 (HLA-A26/A30). However, the CD3+/CD56+ lymphocytes were cytotoxic to both PC-9 and K562. In conclusion, IL-12 is considered to be a useful cytokine for both the induction of lung-cancer specific CTL and the augmentation of non-MHC-restricted cytotoxicity against tumor cells, and may be applicable for adoptive immunotherapy using CTL.