Review

T-cell clonotypes in cancer

Per thor Straten¹ , David Schrama² , Mads Hald Andersen¹ and Jürgen C Becker²

¹  Tumor Immunology Group, Institute of Cancer Biology, Danish Cancer Society, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

²  Department of Dermatology, Julius Maximilians-University, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany

author email corresponding author email

Journal of Translational Medicine 2004, 2:11doi:10.1186/1479-5876-2-11

Published:	8 April 2004

Abstract

Cells of the immune system spontaneously recognize autologous tumor cells and T cells are believed to be the main effector cells for the immune surveillance of cancer. Recent advances in our understanding of basic and tumor immunology together with methodological developments implies that tumor specific T cells can now be studied functionally, phenotypically as well as molecularly. T cells recognize peptide antigens in the context of MHC molecules through the clonally distributed T-cell receptor (TCR), thus, the clonal distribution of the TCR offers the means to detect and track specific T cells based upon detection of the unique TCR. In this review, we present and discuss available data on TCR utilization of tumor specific T cells in murine models as well as spontaneous and treatment induced anti-tumor T-cell responses in humans.