Human lymphoblastoid interferon in the treatment of small cell lung cancer

Abstract

Summary Ten patients with small cell lung cancer were treated with high dose human lymphoblastoid interferon (50-100 megaunitsm-2) for 5 days, followed by low dose interferon (3 megaunits m-2) for 3 weeks. At the end of treatment, and one month later, there was no evidence of either complete or partial response. The treatment produced fever, anorexia and weight loss, with transient leucopenia and thrombocytopenia; there was evidence of a non-cholestatic elevation of serum alanine aminotransferase, with clinical deterioration in the condition of three patients presenting with hyponatraemia. A transient hypocalcaemia during high dose therapy was also noted. It seems that lymphoblastoid interferon as a single agent is unlikely to have a role in the treatment of small cell lung cancer, and that its administration as employed in this study is associated with considerable toxicity.

Interferon-alpha is a predisposing risk factor for carbamazepine-induced hyponatremia: A case of syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis caused by interferon-alpha therapy

“…Also, interferon therapy alone has not been demonstrated to cause SIAD. Most patients appear to develop SIAD in combination with other drugs (Jones et al 1983;Bennet et al 1986;Lei et al 1995;Berghmans 1996;Bjorck and Samuelsson 1996). In fact, CBZ is known to sensitize the renal distal tubules (Meinders et al 1974;Wales 1975;Stephens et al 1978) or to cause inappropriate secretion of AVP (Soelberg Sørensen and Hammer 1984), thus, CBZ could have caused the abnormal antidiuresis in the present case.…”

“…There have been many reports of hyponatremia in patients treated with interferon (Jones et al 1983;Bennet et al 1986;Lei et al 1995;Berghmans 1996;Bjorck and Samuelsson 1996). However, the mechanism is unclear.…”

Adjunctive interferon-alpha-2c in stage IIIB/IV small-cell lung cancer: a phase III trial

“…However, these results could not be confirmed [12,23]. PEZZA et al [24] administered recombinant IFN-α together with induction polychemotherapy and radiotherapy and obtained remarkably high response rates (57% complete response (CR), 32% partial response (PR)) in a phase I/II study, and yet median survival was in the usual range (11.8 months).…”

The effects of alpha and gamma interferons on human lung cancer cells grown in vitro or as xenografts in nude mice

“…Although IFN-c has been shown in clinical trials to have some activity in lymphomas, breast cancer, melanoma and myeloma, there was no response in either non-small cell (Stoopler et al, 1980) or small cell (Jones et al, 1983) lung cancers. In view of the impending availability for clinical trial of recombinant IFN-y, and our continuing interest in lung cancer therapy, we decided to investigate the comparative effects of IFN-a and IFN-y on lung cancer cells in culture and the effect of IFN-y on the growth of xenograft tumours in nude mice.…”