Antibody production in cultured blood lymphocytes from breast cancer patients

Peripheral blood lymphocytes from female patients with early breast cancer were examined before surgery for their ability to develop a primary antibody response in vitro against sheep red blood cells in soft agar cultures containing autologous plasma. After 6 days incubation, foci of proliferating hemolysin-forming cells surrounded by a lytic area were detected on the surface of the plates and counted with a dissection microscope; this response was antigen-dependent and antigen-specific. We applied this assay to a group of women suffering from early breast cancer and devoid of distant metastases. From our data, it appears that if all the patients are grouped together, cancer-bearing women produce somewhat fewer (P less than 0.05) haemolytic foci than healthy controls. However, division of the cancer patients into two subgroups, according to the TNM pretreatment clinical classification of regional lymph nodes, generated an interesting finding: N1 patients (N1b or N1a) produced definitely fewer foci than N0 patients, and the difference was highly statistically significant (P less than 0.001). The depression of anti sheep red blood cell antibody production observed in N1 patients was unrelated to the presence or absence of metastatic growth in their regional lymph nodes.