PURPOSE: Immunotherapy is one of the treatment strategies for breast cancer, the most common cancer in women worldwide. In this approach, the patient's immune system is stimulated to attack microscopic tumors and control metastasis. Here, we used interferon γ-induced protein 10 (IP-10), which induces and strengthens antitumor immunity, as an immunotherapeutic agent. We employed Leishmania tarentolae, a nonpathogenic lizard parasite that lacks the ability to persist in mammalian macrophages, was used as a live delivery system for carrying the immunotherapeutic agent. It has been already shown that arginase activity, and consequently, polyamine production, are associated with tumor progression. METHODS: A live delivery system was constructed by stable transfection of pLEXSY plasmid containing the IP-10-enhanced green fluorescent protein (IP-10-egfp) fusion gene into L. tarentolae. Then, the presence of the IP-10-egfp gene and the accurate integration location into the parasite genome were confirmed. The therapeutic efficacy of IP-10 delivered via L. tarentolae and recombinant pcDNA-(IP-10-egfp) plasmid was compared by determining the arginase activity in a mouse 4T1 breast cancer model. RESULTS: The pcDNA-(IP-10-egfp) group showed a significant reduction in tumor weight and growth. Histological evaluation also revealed that only this group demonstrated inhibition of metastasis to the lung tissue. The arginase activity in the tissue of the pcDNA-(IP-10-egfp) mice significantly decreased in comparison with that in normal mice. No significant difference was observed in arginase activity in the sera of mice receiving other therapeutic strategies. CONCLUSION: Our data indicates that IP-10 immunotherapy is a promising strategy for breast cancer treatment, as shown in the 4T1-implanted BALB/c mouse model. However, the L. tarentolae-(IP-10-EGFP) live delivery system requires dose modifications to achieve efficacy in the applied regimen (six injections in 3 weeks). Our results indicate that the arginase assay could be a good biomarker to differentiate tumoral tissues from the normal ones.
Animals ; Arginase ; Breast Neoplasms ; Chemokine CXCL10 ; Female ; Genetic Therapy* ; Genome ; Humans ; Immune System ; Immunotherapy ; Interferons ; Leishmania ; Lizards ; Lung ; Macrophages ; Mice ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Parasites ; Plasmids ; Transfection ; Tumor Burden

BACKGROUND/AIMS: A recent study revealed increasing incidence and prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Iran. The Iranian Registry of Crohn's and Colitis (IRCC) was designed recently to answer the needs. We reported the design, methods of data collection, and aims of IRCC in this paper. METHODS: IRCC is a multicenter prospective registry, which is established with collaboration of more than 100 gastroenterologists from different provinces of Iran. Minimum data set for IRCC was defined according to an international consensus on standard set of outcomes for IBD. A pilot feasibility study was performed on 553 IBD patients with a web-based questionnaire. The reliability of questionnaire evaluated by Cronbach's α. RESULTS: All sections of questionnaire had Cronbach's α of more than 0.6. In pilot study, 312 of participants (56.4%) were male and mean age was 38 years (standard deviation=12.8) and 378 patients (68.35%) had ulcerative colitis, 303 subjects (54,7%) had college education and 358 patients (64.74%) were of Fars ethnicity. We found that 68 (12.3%), 44 (7.9%), and 13 (2.3%) of participants were smokers, hookah and opium users, respectively. History of appendectomy was reported in 58 of patients (10.48%). The most common medication was 5-aminosalicylate (94.39%). CONCLUSIONS: To the best of our knowledge, IRCC is the first national IBD registry in the Middle East and could become a reliable infrastructure for national and international research on IBD. IRCC will improve the quality of care of IBD patients and provide national information for policy makers to better plan for controlling IBD in Iran.
Administrative Personnel ; Appendectomy ; Colitis ; Colitis, Ulcerative ; Consensus ; Cooperative Behavior ; Data Collection ; Dataset ; Education ; Feasibility Studies ; Humans ; Incidence ; Inflammatory Bowel Diseases ; Iran ; Male ; Mesalamine ; Middle East ; Opium ; Pilot Projects ; Prevalence ; Prospective Studies