Colon cancer: hypotesis of progression mechanism

sIL-2R levels have been found to be elevated in several clinical conditions, including disseminated solid neoplasms. In our previous study on colon cancer patients, we found that they were correlated with the stage of the disease, showing an increase from stage I to stage IV. In order to verify if this situation can affect the in vitro activation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells, we examined their proliferative responses to IL-2 and anti-CD3. Preliminary results show that the proliferation to IL-2+antiCD3 is igher than IL-2 alone in the stage IV (p<0.001), where we found to be significantly increased the sIL-2Rlevel. In other stage this value is not different (p=0.49). This result is presumably consistent with the presence of cellular populations showing a different resonse to activation, which is probably produced by environmental IL-2 concentration change. Can it be supposed tht in our patients, a IL-2 production deficiency appears selective for CD3+ T cells, which have the suitable characteristics for this proliferative generation. Thus, since this population includes the tumoral specific cytotoxic precursor cells, it should be helpful for the tumor regression, but it is conceivable that it cannot perform its functions, through a deficient responsiveness of ThCD4+ specific subpopulation.