Human mesothelioma cell lines, CRL-5915, 5820, and 5830 were obtained from the American type culture collection (Rockville, MD, USA) with the permission of Prof. A Gazdar (MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas, USA) [
23]. Mouse mesothelioma cell lines, ABI (H-2d) from BALB/c mice, AE17 (H-2k) from CBA mice, and AC29 (H-2b) from C57BL/6 mice were obtained from Prof. B. Robinson, QEII Medical Centre, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Australia [
24]. Human ovarian tumor (teratocarcinoma) cell line, PA-1 and PA-STK were obtained from Prof. S Freeman, Tulane University Medical School, New Orleans, USA [
17]. Three ovarian tumor cell lines already available in the laboratory were: OVC-432 (ovarian carcinoma, a kind gift from Dr C. Dohring, Basel Institute for Immunology, Basel, Switzerland [
25], SKOV-3 (ovarian adenocarcinoma) [
26], and OIB, an ovarian tumor cell line established by Prof. F Farzaneh in the Molecular Medicine Department [
27]. All human cell lines were maintained in DMEM, supplemented with 10% Fetal Calf Serum (FCS) and 1% sodium pyruvate. In the case of mouse mesothelioma cells, the RPMI-medium was supplemented with 5% FCS, 20 mM HEPES, 50 mM 2-mercaptoethanol (2ME) and 2 mM glutamine.