Cascading adoptive cell therapy for metastatic melanoma

Adoptive tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) therapy has demonstrated drastic effects on advanced malignant melanoma. Intensive pretreatment such as chemotherapy and/or total body irradiation has been used to eliminate immunosuppressive components and therefore enhances the antitumor effects of TILs. However, these pretreatments may cause severe side effects, especially for elderly patients. This case observes the complete response of how a patient with metastatic melanoma was treated sequentially with local tumor resection, postoperative adoptive cytokine-induced killer cells and TILs infusion. In addition, the cascading adoptive cell therapy was well-tolerated by the patient. Therefore, being pretreated with cytokine-induced killer cells could ameliorate the immunosuppressive condition in the patient and provide a favorable circumstance for subsequent TILs infusion. The further adoptive TILs therapy could exert the most powerful antitumor activity in such an amicable circumstance.