Recent progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms of antitumor immune responses, which may further clarify the immune status of cancer patients. In this study, we performed a detailed evaluation of the immunological status of 47 patients with advanced solid cancer, who had received no immunosuppressive treatment, and compared the results with 32 healthy subjects. Flow-cytometry data for peripheral blood were obtained using 19 monoclonal antibodies against various cell surface and intracellular molecules. Absolute numbers of T cells, several T cell subsets, B cells, and NK cells were significantly decreased in patients compared with healthy subjects. The percentage of CD27(+)CD45RA(+) T cells was lower and that of CD27(-)CD45RA(-) T cells was higher in patients compared with controls. Regulatory and type 2 helper T cells were elevated in patients relative to healthy subjects. The percentage of perforin(+) NK cells was significantly lower in patients than in controls. These results suggest a dysfunctional anti-tumor immune response in cancer patients. Furthermore, peripheral blood from 26 of 47 cancer patients was analyzed after adoptive T cell immunotherapy (ATI). ATI increased the number of T cell subsets, but not B and NK cells. The number and percentage of regulatory T cells decreased significantly. These results suggest that ATI can restore impaired and imbalanced T cell immune status.
CD23, a low-affinity receptor for IgE (FcεRII), is a 45-kDa type II transmembrane glycoprotein and contains a Ca 2ϩ -dependent (C-type) lectin domain (12,20,36). Molecules that have been identified as CD23 receptors are IgE (43), CD21 (3) and its carbohydrate chain (4), the galactose ends of various sugar chains (22), and CD11b and CD11c (29). Interactions between CD23 and such ligands expressed on B cells are thought to be involved in various biological activities, including cellcell adhesion (5,11,25), regulation of IgE synthesis (10,16,37), regulation of cell proliferation and antigen presentation (31). CD23 is expressed on follicular dendritic cells, mature B cells and so on. On the B cell surface, some characteristic membrane molecules such as sIg and MHC class II are present. These B cell characteristic molecules form a B cell antigen receptor (BCR) complex (8, 40) and MHC class II complex containing other molecules (34, 37). BCR or MHC class II complexes transmit regulatory signals into B cells (1,7,15,41), and the signaling is regulated by several associated
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