title: Immunophenotyping at the time of diagnosis distinguishes two groups of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients: implications for adoptive immunotherapy.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Adoptive immunotherapy with EBV-specific CTLs (EBV-CTL) has been used to treat EBV-associated nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) but only a fraction of the patients shows noticeable clinical response.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sixty-seven newly diagnosed NPC patients from 2005 to 2007 and 21 healthy donors were collected. Immunological parameters and immune function of PBMCs and EBV-CTL were analyzed by flow cytometer analysis (FACS) and ⁵¹Cr releasing experiment; Molecular characteristics on NPC tumor cells were investigated by immunochemical staining and statistic analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  NPC patients can be classified into two groups based on the percentage of CD3+ T cells in peripheral blood before accepted any treatment, (>52.6%, mean-2SE from healthy controls, NPC Group 1; <52.6%, NPC Group 2). The patients in Group 2 showed a significant decrease of CD3+CD8+ T-cells, CD3+CD4+ T-cells and CD3+CD45RO+ memory T cells, and increase of CD3⁻CD16+ NK cells compared to Group 1 patients and healthy controls (P<0.001). EBV-specific T cell responses, were weaker in this group of patients and their tumor cells expressed lower levels of the EBV encoded latent membrane protein (LMP)-1 and HLA class II protein compared with the patients of NPC Group 1 (P<0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings demonstrate that NPC patients could be distinguished on the basis of their immune status which will affect the efficacy of EBV-CTL immunotherapy.
authors: State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, China.
authors: Jiang
authors: J
authors: Li
authors: Qiu-yan
authors: QY
authors: Chen
authors: Haoyuan
authors: H
authors: Mo
authors: Yi-lan
authors: YL
authors: Zhang
authors: Zhou-feng
authors: ZF
authors: Huang
authors: Yi-xin
authors: YX
authors: Zeng
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