Conditioning: a new approach to immunotherapy.

It has been demonstrated by Parmiani et al. (Int. J. Cancer, 29: 323-332, 1982) that a significant protective effect can be obtained against the transplanted syngeneic YC8 lymphoma by prior immunization of BALB/c mice with normal allogeneic DBA/2 spleen cells. Using this well established tumor model, we investigated a novel approach, conditioning of specific immunotherapeutic activity. For this purpose, we used the odor of camphor as the conditioning stimulus and allogeneic DBA/2 spleen cells as unconditioning stimulus. We associated the conditioning and unconditioning stimuli two, three, and four times. Following this the conditioned animals were reexposed to the odor of camphor only. In each case, we observed a delay in tumor growth and in some instances the conditioned group performed better than the immunotherapy control group. These results indicate that a limited number of treatments with the antigen is better than the continuous treatment in maintaining the immunity and the homeostasis of the system.