[IL-12 contributes to reconstruction of cellular immune function of tumor patients and mice after chemotherapeutics].

Objective To investigate the recovery effects of IL-12 on the immune suppression induced by chemotherapeutic medicine in patients and mouse with malignant tumors. Methods Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from tumor patients with or without chemotherapy and healthy donors were stimulated with or without anti-CD3 antibody plus anti-CD28 antibody in the presence or absent of IL-12. The levels of IFN-γ and TNF-α in culture supernatants were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The expression of IFN-γ in different subsets of T cells was analyzed by fluorescence activated cell sorter (FACS). Finally, we established the cisplatin toxicity mouse model and measured the levels of IFN-γ and TNF-α by ELISA and FACS. Results PBMCs from the patients with malignant tumors produced significantly lower levels of IFN-γ and TNF-α than PBMCs from healthy donors. The production of IFN-γ and TNF-α was higher in pre-chemotherapeutic patients compared with post-chemotherapeutic patients, whereas IL-12 could remarkably recover the production of IFN-γ and TNF-α in the patients with malignant tumors. FACS showed that IL-12 recovered the expression of IFN-γ by CD4 ⁺ and CD8 ⁺ T cells in post-chemotherapeutic patients. Finally, the results from the animal studies in vitro and in vivo proved that IL-12 recovered the inhibitory effect of chemotherapeutic drugs on immune function. Conclusion Chemotherapeutics inhibits the immune responses in patients and animals, and IL-12 can recover the suppressive effects of chemotherapeutics on the production of cytokines. Our results indicated that IL-12 might play an important role in the reconstruction of immune function in cancer patients with chemotherapeutics.