The effect of class II gene transfection on the tumourigenicity of the H-2K-negative mouse leukaemia cell line K36.16

Abstract

There is much evidence to suggest that potentially immunogenic tumour cells can escape cytolytic immune destruction by loss of class I antigen expression. Many tumours are allele-specific class I negative and, in murine systems, reconstitution of class I expression by gene transfection leads to an increase in tumour immunogenicity. In many systems where mice have rejected class I transfected tumour cells they are also immune to a subsequent challenge with the untransfected parent tumour. In this study we have examined the effect of stable class II antigen expression (induced by gene transfection) on a class I loss mutant (H-2Kk negative) murine cell line, K36.16. We show that H-2Ek expression is more effective at increasing tumour immunogenicity than the reconstitution of H-2Kk expression in these cells. This suggests that the induction of class II antigen expression on tumour cells may provide an effective way of enhancing tumour-specific immune responses in vivo.