Figure 1.

T-cell responses to MAAs in PBMCs of melanoma patients undergoing NGR/VAX treatment. Freshly isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from melanoma patients (#02, 05, 07 and 08) were used to assess their reactivity against melanoma associated antigens (MAA)-derived peptides (MAGE-A2, MAGE-A3, NA-17A, NY-ESO-1, MART-1, gp100, TYR) on HLA-A*01⁺ 1061 EBV-B (Panel A and D) or HLA-A*0201⁺ T2 cells (Panels A, B and C) and autologous, when available, or allogeneic HLA-matched tumor cell reactivity (Panel C). Interferon γ (IFNγ)-based ELISPOT assay was used for this analysis. Data are expressed as N. of spots/3 × 10⁴cells and are subtracted of the background of IFNγ release from T cells incubated with EBV-B or T2 control cells alone. Results represent averages of triplicates with SD ≤ 10%; statistical analysis of differences between means of IFNγ released by T cells was performed by 2-tailed Student's t-test; significance defined as p < 0.05.