A cycle of treatment with
antineoplastic compounds may alter the immunologic properties of experimental
tumors leading to an increased survival of syngeneic hosts as compared to that observed with the original parental
tumors. However, a loss of growth potential in
drug-treated
tumors might account for this preferential rejection by syngeneic or by allogeneic animals. In the present study the cell cycle kinetics of parental (L1210 and L5178Y) and
DIC-altered leukemic cells (L1210/
DIC; L5178Y/
DIC) has been evaluated by the establishment of labelled mitosis curves. The in vitro
DNA synthesis and cell loss were also investigated. The experimental results indicate that no significant differences in the above properties were present for parental and corresponding
drug-treated leukemic sublines. Immuno-depressed allogeneic mice were more resistant to
lymphoma challenge when inoculated with the
DIC-sublines than with the parental lines. On adoptive transfer of immune lymphocytes there was increased survival of allogeneic animals challenged with
DIC cells, attributable to an additional immune response to
DIC-induced
antigens. Thus, parental or
DIC-
tumors showed similar tumorigenic characteristics, and the increased allogeneic host survival to
DIC-cell challenge may be attributed to an additional immune response of the animal
DIC-induced
antigens.