Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) gene transduction in murine adenocarcinoma drives neutrophil-mediated tumor inhibition in vivo. Neutrophils discriminate between G-CSF-producing and G-CSF-nonproducing tumor cells.

We have previously demonstrated that the murine colon adenocarcinoma C-26 cell line transduced with the human gene for the granulocyte CSF (G-CSF) loses tumorigenic activity through a mechanism that involved massive targeting of neutrophils at the site of tumor injection. The suppression of tumorigenicity by G-CSF was limited to the G-CSF-producing cells and was not transferred to nonproducing C-26 cells in a mixed tumor transplantation assay. We present direct evidence that neutrophils are involved in this phenomenon. We firstly examined, by electron microscopy (EM), the morphology of tumor infiltrates obtained 2, 5, and 10 days after s.c. injection of a mixture of G-CSF-producing and -nonproducing C-26 cells into syngeneic BALB/c mice. The EM analysis showed at 5, but not at 2 or 10 days, the presence of neutrophils in intimate contact with tumor cells. We then investigated whether neutrophils discriminate between G-CSF-producing and -nonproducing C-26 cells. To this aim, C-26 cells were transduced, via retroviral vector, with the Escherichia coli LacZ gene and mixed tumor transplantation assays were performed by injecting a mixture of G-CSF-producing beta-gal- and G-CSF-nonproducing beta-gal+ C-26 cells at different ratios. Histologic and EM analysis of the tumors growing at the site of injection were carried out. Five days after injection, treatment with x-gal revealed, at the histochemical level, the presence of neutrophils around G-CSF producing beta-gal- cells; cell-cell contacts and fusion of cell membranes were detected by EM only between neutrophils and G-CSF-producing cells. In vitro experiments, performed in Boyden chambers, confirmed that the G-CSF produced by C-26 cells was a chemoattractant for neutrophils. In addition, a colorimetric, cytostatic assay revealed that neutrophils were able to inhibit the growth of G-CSF-producing but not of G-CSF-nonproducing C-26 cells. Thus the tumor take after injection of G-CSF-producing C-26 cells seems to be controlled in situ through two major mechanisms namely neutrophil chemotaxis and neutrophil-mediated tumor inhibition. The results indicate that neutrophils can discriminate between G-CSF-producing and -nonproducing tumor cells and that neutrophils infiltrate the tumor mixture as long as G-CSF-producing cells are present.