The Genetic and Cellular Basis of Regulation of the Immune Response to Tumor Antigens

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Abstract
Immunity in the mammalian host has evolved as an integrated network of interacting cells and cell products that coordinately recognize and respond to foreign antigenic stimuli. The quality of this response is dictated by the nature of this antigen, as well as by the diverse biologic, immunologic, and genetic constitution of the immunized host. Specificity is accomplished through the expression of clonally distributed receptor structures on the differentiated lymphocyte, which serve to select only those cells that are precommitted to any particular antigenic configuration. The expression of immune responsiveness depends upon the antigen- or receptor-stimulated activation (Jerne, 1975) of such specifically selected cells, by means which are only recently being investigated at the molecular level (Seidman et al., 1979; Sakano et al., 1979).