adjuvant activity of the cell-wall skeletons prepared from eight species (ten strains) of Nocardia was determined by Brunner's method using allogeneic cell-mediated cytotoxicity test. The antitumor activity of the cell-wall skeleton of N. rubra, which showed the most potent adjuvant activity, was examined using EL-4 leukemia and MH-134 hepatoma cells in syngeneic mice. Its results suggest that the cell-wall skeleton of N. rubra is more potent than BCG cell-wall skeleton as the immunotherapeutic

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... agent for cancer immunotherapy in man. The chemical properties of the cell-wall skeleton of N. rubra were also described. In the previous papers, we reported that the cell-wall skeleton of Mycobacterium bovis BCG is a "mycolic acid-arabinogalactan-mucopeptide" complex,3,4) and that BCG cellwall skeleton was a potent adjuvant for the circulating antibody formation and the induction of cell-mediated immunity in mice and guinea pigs.