Activating anti-idiotypic human anti-mouse antibodies for immunotherapy of ovarian carcinoma.

Human anti-mouse antibodies (HAMA) are observed frequently after immunoscintigraphy with monoclonal antibodies (MoAb) directed against CA-125. As the authors have shown previously, HAMA can cause false-positive CA-125 values in routine CA-125 immunoradiometric assay (IRMA) tumor-marker assays (in one case, up to 900 days after immunoscintigraphy). In 32 patients, the authors found a HAMA frequency of 34% (11/32: 3/7 after the first administration, 6/13 after the second, and 2/2 after the third). Ten patients developed extremely high CA-125 levels after undergoing the CIS IRMA assay (up to 80,000 U/ml) in parallel to a significant HAMA increase. The use of different assays, or HAMA removal before in vitro testing, can solve this problem. After a new CA-125 assay containing antibodies that recognize different epitopes on the CA-125 antigen (Biomira Tru-Quant OV) was applied, only mildly increased assay results or normal levels were measured. Most of HAMA-positive patients demonstrated a predominantly anti-idiotypic response, determined with two different HAMA assays. Seven patients with anti-idiotypic HAMA responses after OC-125 immunoscintigraphy remained free of tumor or had stable disease (2-42 or more months), contrary to their poor prognoses that had been made based on the underlying stages of their tumors. All of these patients are currently doing well (Karnofsky Index > 70%) and show no significant tumor progression. In light of their extremely poor prognoses (5-year survival rates of 3-5% in recurrent International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics III/IV stages), without further chemotherapy, these courses are extremely unusual. Preliminary in vitro experiments lead to the postulation that anti-idiotypic HAMA may trigger an antitumor effect either by suppressing the growth of CA-125-expressing cancer cells directly, or by activating the patient's immune response via induction of Ab3. Similar results are observed after immunoscintigraphy with a technetium-99m-labeled anti-CA-125 monoclonal antibody (B43.13), which the authors now also use for immunotherapy of ovarian cancer patients by repeated injections, hoping that induction of anti-idiotypic HAMA will be beneficial for prolonged survival of patients with ovarian carcinoma.