Clinical effects and immunological changes in interferon therapy for advanced renal cell carcinoma

: alpha-type Interferon (INF-alpha A, MOR-22, HLBI) or gamma-type Interferon (GI-3) was administered intramuscularly to 18 patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma to examine its antitumor effect and immunological changes. All of these subjects had distant metastases and were subjected to Interferon therapy for more than 8 weeks. Tumor response according to the Koyama-Saito Team was PR, NC and PD in 4, 8 and 6 cases, respectively. In terms of the immunological changes in the peripheral blood before and after the Interferon therapy, NK cell activity showed increases for PR cases and decreases for NC and PD cases, with an obvious difference between Interferon-effective and -ineffective cases. For peripheral lymphocyte subpopulation, T-pan cell, T-helper cell and T-suppressor cell remained unchanged or tended to decrease. The difference in the change in NK cell activity observed between Interferon-effective and -ineffective cases suggested the involvement of NK cell activity in the efficacy of Interferon.