Cancer Biology

The adoptive transfer of immune cells for cancer, chronic infection, and autoimmunity is an emerging field that has shown promise in recent trials. The transgenic adenocarcinoma mouse prostate (TRAMP) is a classical mouse model of prostate cancer (PCa) and TRAMP cell lines were derived from a TRAMP mouse tumor. TRAMP-C2 is tumorigenic when (subcutaneously) s.c. grafted into syngeneic C57BL/6 host mice (Foster et al., 1997). This protocol will describe the adoptive transfer of purified CD11b⁺Gr1⁺ double positive (DP) myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) and CD3⁺ T cells in the TRAMP-C2 prostate cancer mouse model in order to establish the intrinsic functionality of these immune cells and to determine their role in tumorigenesis in vivo (Yan et al., 2014).

Natural Killer (NK) cells are cytotoxic lymphocytes that constitute a major component of the innate immune system. Immunosurveillance of the host by NK cells for malignant and virally-infected cells results in direct cytotoxicity and the production of cytokines to enhance the immune response. This protocol will describe the adoptive transfer of purified NK cells into NK cell-deficient tumor bearing mice in order to establish the intrinsic functionality of NK cells.