title: Toward improved immunocompetence of adoptively transferred CD8+ T cells.
abstract: Adoptive transfer of autologous or allogenic T cells to patients is being used with increased frequency as a therapy for infectious diseases and cancer. However, many questions remain with regard to defining optimized procedures for preparation and selection of T cell populations for transfer. In a new study in this issue of the JCI, Gattinoni and colleagues used a TCR transgenic mouse model to examine in vitro-generated tumor antigen-specific CD8+ T cells at various stages of differentiation for their efficacy in adoptive immunotherapy against transplantable melanoma. The results confirm that CD8+ T cells progressively lose immunocompetence with prolonged in vitro cultivation and suggest that effector CD8+ T cells alone may be considerably less potent at protecting hosts with advanced tumors than are less differentiated T cells.
authors.affiliation: Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Division of Clinical Onco-Immunology, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland. daniel.speiser@hospvd.ch
authors.forename: Daniel E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Speiser
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Romero
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018414:CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology* / Q000637:transplantation; D002454:Cell Differentiation / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D007111:Immunity, Cellular; D016219:Immunotherapy, Adoptive; D008545:Melanoma / Q000276:immunology* / Q000628:therapy; D051379:Mice; D009374:Neoplasms, Experimental / Q000276:immunology*; D014182:Transplantation, Autologous; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous