Selective antitumor activity of lymphokine-activated killer cells in vitro.

We compared cytotoxic activity of blood mononuclear leukocytes from healthy donors and lymphokine-activated killer cells generated from them towards tumor and normal cells. Lymphokine-activated killer cells exhibited higher (in comparison with blood mononuclear leukocytes) killer activity towards tumor cells. Lymphokine-activated cells and mononuclear leukocytes had no lytic effect on non-transformed eukaryotic cells. Hence, we demonstrated selective cytotoxic activity of effector cells (lymphokine-activated killers) towards tumor cells of different origin (but not normal cells).