Interestingly, after this culture condition, we detected positive tumor-reactivities in lymphocytes by IFNγ ELISPOT assays as shown “Post” in Fig. 1a and Additional file 2: Figure S2a and CD8+ T cells were dominantly expanded in these four cases except the case C215 in which CD4+ T cells were dominantly expanded in all four lymph nodes (Fig. 1b), indicating that the co-culture with autologous tumor cells might be essential to expand rare tumor-reacting T cells from non-metastatic lymph nodes. Here, IFNG is linked to neoplasm.