Figure 5a–d: Allogeneic antileukemic CIK cell activity against AML blasts derived from three different AML patients
CIK cells and DCs were generated from different healthy donors as described in “Materials and methods”. Effector cells were cocultured on day 7 with either non-pulsed DCs or with DCs that had been exposed to the respective blast cell lysates or AML cell-derived total RNA. Lysis of AML blasts was measured using an LDH-release assay on day 14 of cell culture. Effector cells not coincubated with DCs were used as control. (EC, effector cells (control); EC/DC, effector cells cocultured with non-pulsed DCs; EC/DC/lysate, effector cells cocultured with DCs pulsed with blast cell lysate; EC/DC/RNA, effector cells cocultured with DCs pulsed with blast cell-derived total RNA). Results represent the mean of at least four independent experiments (SEM <20% of the mean). The difference between control and effector cells cocultured with non-pulsed DCs at an E:T ratio of 20:1 was significant for patient 1 and 2 (p=0.043 and p=0.028, respectively).