Lymphocyte Biomarkers of Clinical Responses to Adoptive Immunotherapy of Malignant Melanoma

During the last few years, adoptive cellular therapy (ACT) — the isolation of antigen-specific lymphocytes, their ex vivo expansion and activation, and subsequent autologous administration — has been tested for treatment of melanoma tumours. Initial ACT used melanoma -infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) that often contain tumour reactive lymphocytes, of diverse, mostly unknown, specificities [1, 2]. Recently, the identification of melanoma antigens [3] and the development of techniques for selection and expansion of epitope specific T cells has opened the way to the use of tumour antigen specific T cells, and importantly to immune follow up of ACT [4-9]. Despite these advances, several issues remain to address to achieve the major aims of ACT, as the rapid production of clinical grade T cells capable of eliciting a significant destruction of tumour tissue.