Cellular cytotoxicity of human natural killer cells and lymphokine-activated killer cells against bladder carcinoma cell lines.

The cytotoxicity of natural killer (NK) and lymphokine activated killer (LAK) cells against two human bladder tumor cell lines (BT-A and BT-B) was investigated using a fluorometric assay by labeling tumor cell DNA with Hoechst dye No. 33342. Our results demonstrate that BT-A and BT-B cells have low sensitivity to the cytotoxic activity of mononuclear cells (MNC) and NK cells. Cytotoxicity of MNC or NK cells against both tumor cell lines is enhanced during co-culture of the effector cells with the target cells, which suggests that BT-A and BT-B cells provide the signals which could activate MNC to exert cytotoxicity. In contrast to NK cells, IL-2-generated LAK cells showed profound cytotoxicity to BT-A and BT-B within 24 h. In addition to cellular cytotoxicity to bladder tumor cells, we also tested the effect of recombinant interleukin 1 beta (rIL-1 beta), recombinant tumor necrosis factor (rTNF), and the supernatants of co-culture of MNC or LAK cells with bladder tumor cells. The results show no cytotoxic or growth-promoting activity of rIL-1, rTNF, or the crude culture supernatants on bladder tumor cells. We found that LAK cells, but not macrophages or NK cells, may play a major role in cellular cytotoxicity against the two bladder tumor cell lines tested. From this finding we conclude that activation of LAK cells may be one important mechanism induced by adjuvant bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) therapy leading to effective prevention of urothelial bladder carcinoma reappearance.