Photodynamic therapy and immune response in tumor-bearing mice

Since immune response of the host is important in the control of tumor growth and spreading, and the Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is able to increase the antitumor immunity, in our laboratory we examine the effect of PDT on immune compartment of tumor bearing mice. Lymphocytes and macrophages collected from tumor bearing mice pretreated with PDT are cytotoxic in vitro and in vivo against the parental tumor lines, in contrast the same immune cells population collected from tumor bearing mice pretreated only with laser light are unable to lyse the parental tumor cells. In adoptive immunotherapy experiments, treatment of mice bearing MS-2 tumor with adoptive transfer of immune lymphocytes collected from mice pretreated with PDT is able to significantly increase the survival time; in contrast the lymphocytes collected from mice pretreated only with laser light were not able to modify the survival time suggesting that the laser treatment alone did not increase the immune response of the host. In conclusion these results demonstrate that the PDT induce a strong immune response on the host and the stimulated lymphocytes generated could be use for an adoptive immunotherapy approach; moreover laser treatment alone (thermal effect) is unable to modulate the immune response of the host.