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Challenges and Prospects of Adoptive Immunotherapy in Prevention and Treatment of Opportunistic Mycoses in Hematologic Transplant Recipients

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Abstract

Invasive fungal infections remain a serious and life-threatening complication in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Since it became clear that lymphocytes, in particular lymphocytes from the T helper 1 (TH1) subset, play a critical secondary defense against fungal pathogens, the adoptive transfer of functionally active antifungal TH1 cells might be an attractive option to restore adaptive antifungal immune effector mechanisms. Major advances have been made in the generation and characterization of antifungal T cells, which are active against medical important fungi such as Aspergillus spp and Candida spp. However, given the paucity of large homogenous patient populations, major challenges remain in evaluating the clinical usefulness of adoptive antifungal immunotherapy, which should be performed in international collaborative trials.

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Disclosure

Dr. Lehrnbecher holds board memberships with and serves as a consultant to Merck, Gilead, and Schering-Plough, and has served on speakers’ bureaus for and received travel reimbursement from Merck, Gilead, Schering-Plough, Astellas, and Pfizer. No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, Children´s Hospital III, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590, Frankfurt, Germany

    Lars Tramsen, Stanislaw Schmidt, Frauke Roeger, Ulrike Koehl & Thomas Lehrnbecher

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  1. Lars Tramsen
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  2. Stanislaw Schmidt
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  3. Frauke Roeger
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  4. Ulrike Koehl
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  5. Thomas Lehrnbecher
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Correspondence to Thomas Lehrnbecher.

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Tramsen, L., Schmidt, S., Roeger, F. et al. Challenges and Prospects of Adoptive Immunotherapy in Prevention and Treatment of Opportunistic Mycoses in Hematologic Transplant Recipients. Curr Infect Dis Rep 12, 444–449 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11908-010-0130-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11908-010-0130-3

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