Survival of castration‐resistant prostate cancer patients treated with dendritic–tumor cell hybridomas is negatively correlated with changes in peripheral blood CD56brightCD16− natural killer cells.

Dear Editor, We investigated the clinical outcome of treating castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) patients with autologous immunohybridoma cell (aHyC) vaccine generated by electrofusing autologous dendritic (DC) and tumor cells (TC), and tested whether the immunological response, involving the CD56 SP bright sp CD16 SP - sp natural killer (NK), putative pro-metastatic cells,1,2 correlates with survival of CRPC patients. For each patient, the data collected from all questionnaires in the period before the first autologous hybridoma cell (aHyC) vaccine application were averaged, and the same was done for the data acquired during/after the treatment (twice per patient). Survival of castration-resistant prostate cancer patients treated with dendritic-tumor cell hybridomas is negatively correlated with changes in peripheral blood CD56^brightCD16^- natural killer cells Human NK lymphocytes are involved in antitumor immunity, and CD56 SP bright sp CD16 SP - sp NK cells are considered immunoregulatory cytokine-producing cells, representing 5%-10% of all NK cells in peripheral blood.9 The levels of counterpart CD56 SP dim sp CD16 SP + sp NK cells were unaltered compared to baseline in both groups. [Extracted from the article]