Figure 7.

The effect of anti-CD40 addition into MBT therapeutic mixture and re-challenge experiment. B6(Cg)-Tyr^c-2J/J mice were subcutaneously injected with MTT-luciferase cells. After tumors grew to the desired size (about 100 mm³), mice were randomized into four groups (n = 8/group): (i) the group treated with MBTA, (ii) the group treated with MBT, (iii) the group treated with anti-CD40, and (iv) the group treated with PBS. Therapy was given intratumorally on days 0, 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 16, 17, 18, 24, 25, and 26. (A) Anti-CD40 is an agonist antibody binding to transmembrane protein CD40. CD40 is expressed on variety of cells, such as macrophages, dendritic cells, and some tumor cells. (B) The tumor volume growth is presented as a growth curve and (C) as an area under the curve (AUC). (D) The survival analysis is presented as a Kaplan–Meier curve (p = 0.056). (E) Mice with complete tumor elimination from the groups treated with MBTA (n = 5) and with MBT (n = 2) were re-challenged on day 120 (since the start of the therapy) by 3 × 10⁶ MTT-luciferase cells. All animals rejected injected tumor cells.