Specificity of In Vivo Tumor Rejection Assessed by Mixing Immune Spleen Cells with Target and Unrelated Tumor Cells 1 2

Summary

When myelomonocytic leukemia cells were admixed to spleen cells immune to a fibrosarcoma and the fibrosarcoma target cells, the growth of the leukemic cells was not inhibited. This was demonstrated in in vivo adoptive transfer experiments involving syngeneic animals. It was also shown that T cells are essential for the transfer of immunity to the fibrosarcoma. The results demonstrate that tumor cell rejection was a completely immunologically specific process.

The authors thank Drs. Harris, Metcalf, and Szenberg for their interest in the work, and Misses P. Bell and G. Cousins for their excellent technical assistance.