The prognosis for patients diagnosed with malignant gliomas remains very poor and the non-specific nature of standard treatment often results in damage to surrounding normal brain. Immunotherapy directed against tumor-specific antigens holds the potential to target malignant cells more precisely, but it is severely limited because we do not have a strong understanding of the tumor rejection antigens present in human cancers. The recent finding that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) propagates in a large number of malignant gliomas, without infecting surrounding normal brain cells, promises to direct brain tumor immunotherapy against immunogenic viral targets.

Recent clinical trials highlight the benefit of adoptive immunotherapy, in setting of chemotherapy-induced lymphopenia, as a powerful way to guide the recovering immune system toward anti-tumor recognition. We propose to investigate CMV antigen expression in malignant glioma specimens, and evaluate adoptive immunotherapy following treatment-induced lymphopenia using murine model of CMV-associated astrocytomas.