Suda T, Murray R, Fischer M, Yokota T, Zlotnik A
DNAX Research Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Palo Alto, CA 94304.
J Immunol. 1990 Mar 1;144(5):1783-7.
Cytokines are known to play a key role in the development of several hemopoietic lineages including lymphocytes. Two cytokines: IL-4 (in the presence of PMA) and IL-7 have been shown to induce immature fetal thymocyte proliferation. It has also been suggested that IL-2 plays an important role in fetal T cell development. In this report, we investigated the effects of several cytokines (known to be growth factors for T-lineage cells) on fetal thymocyte proliferation. Our results indicate that: 1) TNF-alpha and a newly described cytokine, P40, enhance fetal thymocyte proliferation stimulated by IL-2 (but not IL-4 or IL-7). 2) The enhancement induced by P40 is not mediated by TNF-alpha because blocking antibodies against this cytokine failed to inhibit this response. 3) IL-4 inhibits fetal thymocyte proliferation in response to TNF-alpha + IL-2 or to IL-7 but not to P40 + IL-2. Finally, 4) the proliferating cells to all cytokine combinations used were Thy-1+. These observations suggest that these cytokine combinations induce independent pathways of T cell proliferation in the developing thymus.
已知细胞因子在包括淋巴细胞在内的多种造血谱系的发育中起关键作用。两种细胞因子：IL-4（在佛波醇-12-肉豆蔻酸酯-13-乙酸酯存在的情况下）和IL-7已被证明可诱导未成熟胎儿胸腺细胞增殖。也有研究表明IL-2在胎儿T细胞发育中起重要作用。在本报告中，我们研究了几种细胞因子（已知是T谱系细胞的生长因子）对胎儿胸腺细胞增殖的影响。我们的结果表明：1）肿瘤坏死因子-α（TNF-α）和一种新描述的细胞因子P40可增强由IL-2刺激的胎儿胸腺细胞增殖（但不是由IL-4或IL-7刺激）。2）P40诱导的增强作用不是由TNF-α介导的，因为针对该细胞因子的阻断抗体未能抑制这种反应。3）IL-4抑制胎儿胸腺细胞对TNF-α + IL-2或IL-7的增殖反应，但不抑制对P40 + IL-2的增殖反应。最后，4）对所有使用的细胞因子组合产生增殖反应的细胞均为Thy-1+。这些观察结果表明，这些细胞因子组合在发育中的胸腺中诱导了T细胞增殖的独立途径。
