Assessing antitumor and T cell immune responses by cytokine assay in cancer patients treated with immunotherapy – A pilot study

Abstract Clinical evaluation methods for therapeutic effectiveness based on scientific evidence are desired as tools for contributing to therapeutic strategies and advancements in cancer immunotherapy research. By quantitatively measuring multiple immune response factors responsible for T cell activity and cytotoxic activity, we can be expected to evaluate a patient's immune response. We used plasma samples of human peripheral blood and compared the T cell and antitumor immune response by measuring various immune related cytokines (TNFα, sCD137, IL-2, IL-5, INFɤ, Perforin, Granzyme A, Granzyme B, IL-10, IL-4). In this pilot study, we compared samples from healthy donors with those from cancer patients treated with multivalent dendritic cell (DC) vaccines and natural killer (NK) cell immunotherapy before and after treatment. We examined the usefulness of this method as a biomarker to assess the therapeutic effectiveness of immune cell therapy by statistical analysis and by plotting a cancer immunogram correlating patient data with clinical outcomes.