Enhanced antiproliferative activity by metastatic RAW117 lymphoma cells.

The highly malignant/metastatic murine large cell lymphoma cell line RAW117-H10 forms 100-200 times more liver metastatic tumors than its parental counterpart cell line RAW117-P. RAW117-H10 cells, but not the less malignant/metastatic parental cells, significantly inhibited the mitogen-induced proliferation of normal syngeneic Balb/c and allogeneic ICRC mouse spleen cells. Such an inhibition also occurred when mitomycin-C treated metastatic lymphoma cells were added 24 h after initiation of culture, indicating that no competition with mitogen binding sites on the lymphocytes was necessary for inhibition of proliferation. 'Antiproliferative' cell surface molecules were extracted non-cytolytically from the RAW117-H10 cells using butanol. The butanol extracts from the metastatic RAW117-H10 cells also inhibited the mitogen-induced proliferation and natural killer (NK) cell-mediated cytotoxicity of normal spleen cells. Our results indicate that these 'antiproliferative' cell surface molecules of metastatic murine RAW117-H10 lymphoma cells may have important role(s) in tumor-mediated host immunosuppression.