Departments of Neurosurgery, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, and Department of Neurosurgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Cytotoxic chemotherapy that induces lymphopenia is predicted to ablate the benefits of active antitumor immunization. Temozolomide is an effective chemotherapeutic for patients with glioblastoma multiforme, but it induces significant lymphopenia. Although there is monthly fluctuation of the white blood cell count, specifically the CD4 and CD8 counts, there was no cumulative decline in the patient described in this case report. Depriving patients of this agent, in order to treat with immunotherapy, is controversial. Despite conventional dogma, we demonstrated that both chemotherapy and immunotherapy can be delivered concurrently without negating the effects of immunotherapy. In fact, the temozolomide-induced lymphopenia may prove to be synergistic with a peptide vaccine secondary to inhibition of regulatory T cells or their delayed recovery.
PMID: 18079360 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
