Melanoma immunosurveillance by CD4 T cells

Abstract

The immune system can recognise and control cancer cells in a process termed cancer immunosurveillance. There is increasing evidence that CD4+ T cells play an important role in melanoma immunosurveillance but considerable debate surrounds the underlying anti-tumoral mechanisms. This project thus sought to unravel the role of CD4+ T cell responses to melanoma using a transplantable orthotopic murine melanoma model in conjunction with newly generated genetically modified B16 melanoma cell lines. Remarkably, adoptive transfer of naive or activated antigen-specific CD4+ T cells was highly protective against the development of melanoma. In addition to a classical “helper” function, CD4+ T cells a..