PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Robbins, Paul F.
AU  - Dudley, Mark E.
AU  - Wunderlich, John
AU  - El-Gamil, Mona
AU  - Li, Yong F.
AU  - Zhou, Juhua
AU  - Huang, Jianping
AU  - Powell, Daniel J.
AU  - Rosenberg, Steven A.
TI  - Cutting Edge: Persistence of Transferred Lymphocyte Clonotypes Correlates with Cancer Regression in Patients Receiving Cell Transfer Therapy
AID  - 10.4049/jimmunol.173.12.7125
DP  - 2004 Dec 15
TA  - The Journal of Immunology
PG  - 7125--7130
VI  - 173
IP  - 12
4099  - http://www.jimmunol.org/content/173/12/7125.short
4100  - http://www.jimmunol.org/content/173/12/7125.full
SO  - J. Immunol.2004 Dec 15; 173
AB  - The lack of persistence of transferred autologous mature lymphocytes in humans has been a major limitation to the application of effective cell transfer therapies. The results of a pilot clinical trial in 13 patients with metastatic melanoma suggested that conditioning with nonmyeloablative chemotherapy before adoptive transfer of activated tumor-reactive T cells enhances tumor regression and increases the overall rates of objective clinical responses. The present report examines the relationship between T cell persistence and tumor regression through analysis of the TCR β-chain V region gene products expressed in samples obtained from 25 patients treated with this protocol. Sequence analysis demonstrated that there was a significant correlation between tumor regression and the degree of persistence in peripheral blood of adoptively transferred T cell clones, suggesting that inadequate T cell persistence may represent a major factor limiting responses to adoptive immunotherapy.