Anti-idiotypic antibodies that bind at the active site of an antitumour antibody have the potential to act as surrogate antigens, thus stimulating immune responses against tumour antigens. 105AD7 is a human monoclonal anti-idiotypic antibody that was derived from a cancer patient (Austin et al, 1989) who had received radiolabelled 791T/36 antibody for diagnostic imaging of his colorectal cancer metastases. The 791T/36 antibody has recently been shown to bind to CD55 (Spendlove et al, 1999) a complement regulatory protein. This antigen is over-expressed by tumours presumably to protect them from complement-mediated lysis. 105AD7 has been shown to bind at the combining site of 791T/36 and can thus mimic CD55.A phase I clinical trial with 105AD7 precipitated on alum showed that anti-tumour T cell responses could be induced in advanced colorectal cancer patients with no associated toxicity. T cell responses included antigen-specific blastogenesis, enhanced serum IL-2 production (Robins et al, 1991) and activation of both helper and cytotoxic T cells (Durrant et al, 1999). Furthermore survival of these patients was impressive (12 months) in a patient population with extensive liver metastases. This was significantly longer than contemporary control patients . A second trial evaluated 105AD7 in the neoadjuvant setting. Patients with primary colorectal cancer were immunized at diagnosis and then boosted post surgical resection. Results showed significant infiltration of helper T cells and natural killer cells (Durrant et al, 2000a(Durrant et al, , 2000b expressing the activation marker CD25 (Maxwell-Armstrong et al, 1999) at the tumour site relative to controls. This was associated with an increase in tumour cell apoptosis in trial patients (Amin et al, 2000). Furthermore enhanced tumour killing by both natural killer cells and T cells has been seen following immunization with 105AD7 . The apparent survival benefit observed in the Phase I study was therefore evaluated in a double blind randomized trial of 105AD7 antibody precipitated on alum versus an alum control vaccination.