It refers to the process of infusing vaccine-primed T lymphocytes into lymphodepleted recipients for the purpose of enhancing the proliferation and function of those T cells and increasing immune protection induced by that vaccine.
The concept takes advantage of data from animal and studies in vaccinology and the homeostasis of T cells and has applications in the treatment of infectious disease, immunodeficiency syndromes, and cancer.
A number of pre-clinical and clinical studies have demonstrated that vaccines against pathogens, bystander (non-pathogenic) proteins, tumor-associated antigens, or whole tumor cells, can induce specific T-cell mediated immune responses.
In fact the Hopkins published preliminary results of a clinical study testing the basic immunotransplant concept in acute myeloid leukemia [17] demonstrating encouraging signals of enhanced anti-tumor immunity.
Initial results of this study were presented at the ASCO 2011 Annual Meeting showing successful data towards the primary endpoint: amplification of anti-tumor T-cell responses.