Treatment of Kidney Cancer with Autologous Tumor Cell Vaccines of Short-Term Cell Lines Derived from Renal Cell Carcinoma

Background. We established short-term cultures of autologous tumors from patients with renal carcinoma for use as active specific immunotherapy (i.e., autologous vaccine). Methods. Between 9/91 and 9/99 the cell biology laboratory of the Hoag Cancer Center received 69 kidney tumor samples that had been surgically excised, including 43 primary tumors and 26 metastatic lesions. Efforts were made to establish short-term tumor cell cultures to use as autologous tumor cell vaccines. Prior to treatment, patients underwent a baseline skin test for delayed tumor hypersensitivity (DTH) and then received s.c. injections of 10 million irradiated tumor cells that were given with various adjuvants weekly × 3 and then monthly × 5. Results. Cell lines were established for 55/69 patients (80%) including 36/43 (84%) from primary tumors and 19/26 (73%) from distant metastases. Vaccines were prepared for 41 patients; 27 were treated. At the time of this analysis, follow up data was available for 26 patients with a median fo...