Aldopaolo Palareti

A preliminary report on the use of transfer factor for treating stage D3 hormone-unresponsive metastatic prostate cancer.

As conventional treatments are unsuccessful, the survival rate of stage D3 prostate cancer patients is poor. Reports have suggested the existence of humoral and cell-mediated immunity (CMI) against prostate cancer tumour-associated antigens (TAA). These observations prompted us to treat stage D3 prostate cancer patients with an in vitro produced transfer factor (TF) able to transfer, in vitro and in vivo, CMI against bladder and prostate TAA. Fifty patients entered this study and received one intramuscular injection of 2–5 units of specific TF monthly. Follow-up, ranging from 1 to 9 years, showed that complete remission was achieved in 2 patients, partial remission in 6, and no progression of metastatic disease in 14. The median survival was 126 weeks, higher than the survival rates reported in the literature for patients of the same stage.

Immunotherapy of metastatic kidney cancer.

From April 1986 to September 2000, 122 MRCC patients were treated by monthly intralymphatic injections (containing a mean of 573 IL‐2 U and 26 × 106 LAK cells) and i.m. administration of IFN and TF; 71 patients also received a 3‐day cycle of monthly IL‐2 inhalations with a mean of 998 daily U. MRCC cases not treated by immunotherapy (n = 89) represent our historical controls. Adverse clinical side effects related to treatment were negligible. CR (n = 11) and PR (n = 13) were noticed in 24/122 patients. Of 24 responding patients, 17 resumed progression, whereas 7 remain in remission 11–69 months later. The overall median survival of treated patients (28 months) was 3.5‐fold higher than the median survival of historical controls (7.5 months), and a Kaplan‐Meier curve showed 25% survival 11 years after the beginning of immunotherapy. Apparently, the addition of IL‐2 by inhalation improved survival. The present immunotherapy protocol appears to be efficacious, safe, devoid of adverse side effects, far less costly than others and able to offer a good quality of life to MRCC patients; if confirmed in a multicenter trial, it could set the basis for developing low‐dose immunomodulatory treatments.

Transfer Factor as an adjuvant to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) therapy

The rationale for using transfer factor (TF) in lung cancer patients is that the possibility of improving their cell-mediated immunity to tumour associated antigens (TAA) may improve their survival. From Jan 1984 to Jan 1995, 99 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) resected patients were monthly treated with TF, extracted from the lymphocytes of blood bank donors. In the same period, 257 NSCLC resected patients were considered as non-treated controls. The survival rates of the TF treated group appear significantly improved both for patients in stages 3a and 3b, and patients with histological subtype “large cell carcinoma” (P<0.02). Survival of TF treated patients is also significantly higher (P<0.02) for patients with lymphnode involvement (N2 disease). The results of this study suggest that the administration of TF to NSCLC resected patients may improve survival.

Orally administered HSV-specific transfer factor (TF) prevents genital or labial herpes relapses.

Forty-four patients suffering from genital (22) and labial (22) herpes were orally treated with HSV-1/2-specific transfer factor(TF). TF was obtained by in vitro replication of a HSV-1/2-specific bovine dialysable lymphocyte extract. Treatment was administered bi-weekly the first 2 weeks, and then weekly for 6 months, most patients received 2–3 courses. The total observation period for all patients before treatment was 26660 days, with 544 relapses, and a relapse index of 61.2, whereas the cumulative observation period during and after treatment was 16945 days, with a total of 121 relapsing episodes and a cumulative RI of 21.4 (P<0.0001). Results were equally significant when the 2 groups of patients (labial and genital) were considered separately. These observations confirm previous results obtained with bovine HSV-specific TF, and warrant further studies to establish HSV-specific TF as a choice of treatment for preventing herpes recurrences.

In vitro studies during long term oral administration of specific transfer factor

Abstract153 patients suffering from recurrent pathologies, i.e. viral infections (keratitis, keratouveitis, genital and labial herpes) uveitis, cystitis, and candidiasis were treated with in vitro produced transfer factor (TF) specific for HSV-1/2, CMV and Candida albicans. The cell-mediated immunity of seropositive patients to HSV-1/2 and/or CMV viruses was assessed using the leucocyte migration inhibition test (LMT) and lymphocyte stimulation test (LST) in presence of the corresponding antigens, and the frequency of positive tests before, during and after TF administration was studied. The data were stratified per type of test, antigen and the recipients’ pathology, and statistically evaluated. For the LMT, a total of 960 tests were carried out for each antigen dilution, 3 different antigen dilutions were used per test. 240/960 tests (25.4%) were found positive during non-treatment or treatment with unspecific TF, whereas 147/346 tests (42.5%) were found positive when the antigen corresponding to the specificity of the TF administered to the patient was used (P<0.001). When the data were stratified following pathology, a significant increased incidence of positive tests during specific treatment was also observed (0.0001<P<0.05). In the LST (1174 tests), a significant increase of thymidine uptake was observed in the absence of antigen (control cultures), during treatment with both specific and unspecific TF, but also in the presence of antigen and/or autologous serum during specific TF administration (P<0.0001). TF administration also significantly increased the soluble HLA class I antigens level in 40 patients studied to this effect.

Genetic Algorithms and Classifier Systems in simulating a Cooperative behavior

Genetic Algorithms and Classifier Systems are often used in biologic-like and evolutionary behaviors’ simulations. The basic example is Wood7 Wilson’s world. In this environment it is interesting to study some problems: Can evolve the cooperative behaviors of organisms present in the world? How and when do the behaviors evolve? Some preliminary results show the conditions under that cooperative behavior rules are developing rapidly. Particularly we have pointed out the likely of following observations: a. The cooperative behavior develops more easily if the initial population start from the same point. b. It exists some thresholds under that the cooperative behavior can’t evolve; these thresholds depend to the population size.

Classifier System in Traffic Management

The systems of controlling and improving traffic movement have been studied for several years now. The usefulness of these systems is that they can modify and change the lights signals of traffic lights. It is not enough to intervene when the situation has reached a critical point such as a traffic jam. The system has to work out how the traffic will flow. The ideal solution would be a system that works out and foresees the situation on the roads based on a model of motorists’ behaviour. This research shows how to best utilise the classifier systems so that it would be possible to create a model that is similar to that of the real world.