Treating and/or preventing (M1) the recurrence of cancer, comprises providing lymphocytes obtained from sentinel lymph nodes from a patient, and expanding the lymphocytes in vitro. An independent claim is also included for kit for carrying out (M1) comprising a dye and a substance capable to stimulate proliferation of lymphocytes. ACTIVITY : Cytostatic. Five patients with colon cancer, with no signs of distant metastases or lymph node involvement prior to surgery, were included in the study. The colonic tumor site was mobilized through division of peritoneal adhesions to facilitate inspection. One ml Patent blue dye was injected superficially in the circumference of the tumor. Within five minutes, one to three blue-colored mesenteric lymph nodes were identified macroscopically as sentinel nodes and they were marked with sutures. The sentinel and non-sentinel nodes were cut in half. Slices less than 1 mm thick were cut from the central and the peripheral part of the nodes for flow cytometry and proliferation analysis. The rest of the node underwent routine histopathological examination. Tumors were histopathologically classified as Dukes stages A-C. Upon macroscopical dissection of the removed specimens, between 18 and 29 lymph nodes were identified and embedded for histopathological evaluation. Patients 2 and 3 had metastatic spread to the sentinel node and were histopathologically classified as Dukes C. The other 3 patients did not show any signs of metastatic spread to sentinel node(s) nor to other lymph nodes despite tumors grew through the bowel muscular wall. They were classified as Dukes B. Single cell suspensions of lymphocytes collected separately from peripheral blood (PBL), the tumor, draining sentinel lymph nodes and non-draining lymph nodes were tripe stained with antibodies recognizing the very early activation marker CD69 and the T-cell markers CD4 and CD8 followed by flow cytometry analyzes (FACS). Similar numbers of activated CD4+ lymphocytes, where
