Adjuvant chemo-immunotherapy after curative resection of Stage II and IIIA primary lung cancer

Out of 642 primary lung cancer patients who underwent surgery between 1986 and 1992, 82 cases who underwent curative resection were enrolled for a randomized prospective controlled study of postsurgical adjuvant immunotherapy using Interleukin 2 (IL-2) and lymphokine activated killer (LAK) cells. From 1986 to 1989 (the initial period), Stage IIIA patients were divided into three groups: group A (chemo-immunotherapy) received IL-2, LAK cell adoptive immunotherapy after two courses of anticancer (CDDP, VDS, MMC) chemotherapy, group B (control) received no adjuvant therapy, and group C (chemotherapy) received the same anticancer chemotherapy as group A. In the latter (1990-1992) period, group C was discontinued because of poor results and Stage II and IIIA cases were randomly assigned to group A or B. The 5- and 7-year survival rates of group A (33 cases) and B (36 cases) were 58.2% and 31.5%, respectively in Stage II and IIIA cases. The prognosis of group A was significantly better than that of group B (P = 0.0038 by the Cox-Mantel (C-M) test and 0.0033 by the generalized Wilcoxon (G-W) test). The 5- and 8-year survival rates of each group for Stage IIIA cases were 53.4% (group A, 25 cases), 33.4% (group B, 26 cases), and 30.8%, 15.3% (group C, 13 cases). The prognosis of group A was significantly better than that of group B (P = 0.045 by the C-M and 0.036 by the G-W test). The difference between group A and B was also significant in N0, N1 (P < 0.01), in T1, T2 (P < 0.01), and T3 (P < 0.05) cases. These results indicate that adjuvant immunotherapy using IL-2 and LAK cells in combination with chemotherapy is significantly effective in improving the postsurgical prognosis of lung cancer patients.