Fig. 2

Impaired immunoprevention of mammary carcinogenesis in IL15KO/NeuT mice. Vaccinated mice received a lifelong IL-12-adjuvanted allogeneic HER2/neu-expressing cell vaccine, as described in “Material and methods”. Control mice received PBS. Control mice are the same reported in Fig. 1 and are shown here for comparison. a Tumor-free survival curves (IL15KO/NeuT mice versus NeuT mice, p <0.01 by the Mantel-Haenszel test). Vaccinated IL15KO/NeuT mice: n = 24; vaccinated NeuT mice: n = 56. b Tumor multiplicity is shown as mean ± SEM. c Serum levels of the bioactive IL-15/IL-15Rα determined 20 hours after vaccination in mice of 11 weeks of age by ELISA. The dotted line indicates the sensitivity of the assay. ELISA enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, IL-15 interleukin 15, IL15KO/NeuT BALB/c mice transgenic for rat HER2/neu oncogene and knocked out for IL-15, NeuT BALB/c mice transgenic for rat HER2/neu oncogene, PBS phosphate-buffered saline, SEM standard error of the mean