Lymphocyte timulation in the cellular inflammatory reaction of some human skin tumours

Abstract

By labelling dermal infiltrate cells with H3-thymidine, two types of skin tumours can be distinguished: one type with many labelled cells in the infiltrate (H3-thymidine labelling index, H3-I), the other with few labelled cells. Type I includes malignant melanoma (H3-I = 2.2%) and hemangioendothelioma (2.8%). Type II includes metastases of malignant melanoma (1%), squamous cell carcinoma (1.1%), basel cell epithelioma (0.5%), nevus cell nevus (0.6%), and nevoid lentigo (0.4). The number of labelled cells in the cellular reaction of Type II tumours does not differ significantly from that in normal human corium (0.75%), though there may be a dense cellular reaction. DNA-synthesizing cells were classified with the aid of characteristical stainings and histochemical methods. A vast majority of them were found to be lymphocytes. Our research underlines the special importance of cellular inflammatory reaction, i.e. cellular immunity, im malignant melanoma and probably in hemangioendothelioma.

Characterization of mononuclear cells in the inflammatory infiltrates of cutaneous tumours

“…Several studies using histo-enzymology (Burg & Braun Falco, 1972) and IF (Lai et al, 1974) have been performed on cell populations of the infiammatory infiltrate surrounding tumours. Physiological approaches have employed methods such as the incorporation of tritiated thymidine (Meneghini, Angelini & Bonifazi, 1975;Pullmann & Steighder, 1975). Our results, using a method already described (Voillemot, Galmiche & Bonfils, 1975) and modified, had proved that it could be adapted to the study of Ig-producing cells in skin sections.…”