Fig. 1.

ProTα and its C-terminal peptides increase lymphocyte proliferation of PBMC from healthy individuals (a) and cancer patients (b) during the autologous mixed lymphocyte reaction. Cultures were stimulated with autologous mitomycin C-inactivated PBMC at a responder-to-stimulator ratio of 2:1 in the presence of intact proTα and each individual peptide as described in ‘‘Materials and methods’’. Results are presented as mean stimulation index (SI) values ± SD from pooled data from 17 and 14 healthy donors and cancer patients, respectively—nonstimulated PBMC; *P<0.05 versus (−)