Immunostimulatory and Antitumor Activities of Monoglycosylceramides Having Various Sugar Moieties.

Abstract

Ten kinds of monoglycosylceramides (MonoCers), having the same ceramide portion and different sugar moieties, were synthesized and their immunostimulatory and antitumor activities were examined. The manner of combination between sugar and ceramide has been demonstrated to affect the manifestation of immunostimulatory and resultant antitumor activities of MonoCers, and in the case of D-MonoCers having the D-sugar, alpha-D-MonoCers (sugar combined to ceramide in an alpha-configuration) show stronger activities than beta-D-MonoCers. Furthermore, the form of sugar, not the furanose-form but the pyranose-form, and the 2"- and 4"-hydroxyl groups of the pyranose-form of sugar, seemed to play an important role in the manifestation of the activities of alpha-D-MonoCers.

Invariant NKT Cells Amplify the Innate Immune Response to Lipopolysaccharide

“…Recombinant mouse IL-12 and IL-18 (rmIL-12 and rmIL-18) were purchased from R&D Systems. ␣-Galactosylceramide (␣GalCer; (2S,3S,4R)-1-O-(␣-D-galactopyranosyl)-N-hexacosanoyl-2-amino-1,3,4-octadecanetriol) was synthesized at Kirin Pharmaceuticals (18,19).…”

NKT Cells in Tumor Immunity: Opposing Subsets Define a New Immunoregulatory Axis

“…The role of NKT cells in tumor immunity was not appreciated until it was discovered that ␣GalCer, which had been shown to have antitumor properties (45)(46)(47), was a strong agonist for NKT cells (37). Thereafter, a large number of studies confirmed the antitumor activity of NKT cells stimulated by ␣GalCer in vivo (48,49) or by IL-12 (50).…”

Innate Immunity-Based Immunotherapy of Cancer

“…Anti-tumor effect caused by α-GalCer injection has been shown in mouse tumor models Motoki et al, 1995;Morita et al, 1995). Subsequently, protective roles of NKT cells stimulated by α-GalCer were confirmed by liver and lung metastasis models in mice using B16 melanoma cells and Lewis lung carcinoma cells, respectively (Kawano et al, 1998).…”