This time lapse photography clip has been logged onto the Internet to provide further support for our manuscript being reviewed for publication in the Journal of Immunology. This research is authored by Martin R. Jadus, Christopher Williams, Maria Avina, Mann Ly, Suzanna Kim, Ying Liu, Clifford A. Lowell and H. Terry Wepsic. Drs. Jadus and Wepsic are affiliated with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Long Beach and the University of California, Irvine; Dr. Lowell is a member of the University of California, San Francisco. Mr. Williams, and Ms. Avina, Ly, Kim and Liu are students at California State University, Long Beach.
Previously, we have shown that a highly malignant rat glioma tumor cell can be genetically engineered to express a novel growth factor called the membrane form of macrophage colony stimulating factor. This altered tumor cell activates white blood cells known as macrophages to kill these tumor cells (*Macrophages can recognize and kill tumor cells bearing the membrane isoform of macrophage colony stimulating factor in Blood 87:5232-5241, 1996). In our submitted paper, we believe the mechanism through which these bone marrow derived macrophages kill the tumor cell is through a process called phagocytosis. Here the macrophage simply "eats " the tumor cells. in this film we show that macrophage (the large flat cell ) is engulfing the round tumor cell shown on the left side. This time lapse photography took place over a 2 hour interval and has been condensed to this 3 minute clip.
In preliminary studies, we have seen that macrophages also can kill these tumors in animals (Martin Graf, Martin Jadus, H. Terry Wepsic, Gale Granger, and John Hiserodt: Development of systemic immunity to glioblastoma multiforme using tumor cells genetically engineered to express the membrane bound isoform of macrophage colony stimulating factor now being reviewed for publication in Cancer research). Since these studies are very expensive and grant money for novel innovative work like ours is very limited, if you would like to contribute to a possible cure for cancer using this approach, please send your tax-deductible contribution to Dr. Martin Jadus via the University of California, Irvine, Department of Pathology, Irvine, California 92697-4800. Any donation will be most welcomed and will be used only for supplies and reagents necessary for this work. We have been running this lab for the last 6 years on less than $8,000 a year. So any contribution to this project would be most appreciated.
The authors wish to thank Stan Woo-Sam and Stefani Ching at the University of California, Irvine for digitizing and creating this web site for us.
Please contact Dr. Martin Jadus at: martin.jadus@med.va.gov
last modification date: 10 February 2002