Cancer Immunochemotherapy: Preliminary Studies with Triazene Compounds

One of the most challenging problems of cancer immunotherapy in the clinic concerns the poor immune response of the host for the autochthonous tumor. This is, at least in part, due to the scarce immunogenicity of neoplastic cells, which are not recognized by host’s natural or antigen-dependent immune apparatus. In order to overcome this difficulty, the immunopharmacological approach of “Chemical Xenogenization” (CX) has been introduced by our laboratory in 1970 (1). It has been found that in vivo treatment of leukemia-bearing mice with triazene compounds (TZC) leads to the appearance of novel transplantation antigens on the membrane of neoplastic cells (2–4). TZC-treated cells are rejected by syngeneic hosts and elicit specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses (1–14). The principal features of CX in mouse leukemias are summarized in Table 1.