PMID: 2493506Mar 15, 1989Paper

Tumor targets stimulate IL-2 activated killer cells to produce interferon-gamma and tumor necrosis factor

The Journal of Immunology : Official Journal of the American Association of Immunologists
A ChongE M Hersh

Abstract

Lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells are cytotoxic for a variety of autologous and allogeneic tumor cells as well as modified autologous cells. It is assumed that LAK cells lyse their targets solely by direct cell to cell contact, possibly involving the degranulation and exocytosis of pore-forming elements, similar to that observed with cytotoxic T lymphocytes and NK cells. Reported here are studies demonstrating that LAK cells release factor(s) that are cytotoxic for a human breast carcinoma cell line, MCF-7, when stimulated with tumor cells. The factor(s) are slow acting and maximum cytotoxicity is observed only in a 72-h cytotoxic assay. The ability of LAK cells to secrete cytotoxic factor(s) is dependent on both the ratio of LAK cells to stimulating tumor cells as well as the length of their coincubation. A number of similarly slow acting cytokines that are cytostatic and/or cytotoxic for tumor cells have been described. We tested the ability of specific polyclonal antibodies directed against TNF, IFN-alpha, IFN-beta, and IFN-gamma to neutralize the cytotoxic supernatant activity. Only antibodies specific for IFN-gamma and TNF were neutralizing. We measured the amounts of IFN-gamma and TNF in the cytotoxic supernatants a...Continue Reading

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