Fig. 4.

Pre-treatment of aAPC generated Mart-1 specific CTL inhibits the growth of melanoma in SCID mice. a SCID mice (n = 4) were infused i.v. with aAPC expanded Mart-1 specific CTL (3 × 10⁶ cells/mouse) and injected s.c. with HLA-A2⁺ melanoma cells on the same day. All mice received rhIL-2 (2 × 10⁵ IU/mouse) on days 0 and 2. Untreated mice and CMV-pp65 specific CTL treated mice were used as negative controls. [In vitro characterization of aAPC-induced CMV-pp65 specific CTL showed dose dependent lysis of target cells expressing endogenous antigen, documenting their antigen dependent effector functions (data not shown)]. After the transfer, all mice were monitored for the subcutaneous growth of melanoma as described. The products of perpendicular diameters are shown as mean ± SD. The difference in tumor growth between mice transferred with Mart-1 specific CTL and the control groups was statistically significant (* P < 0.025) as determined by Wilcoxon rank sum test. b After checking the tumor growth in different groups of mice as mentioned above (Fig. 4a), tumor was dissected out from all the mice and weight was determined. The difference in the mean tumor weight between the experimental and the control groups was statistically significant by Student’s t test (* P < 0.05). Both experiments were repeated at least three times