Interferon-induced alterations in metastatic capacity, class-1 antigen expression and natural killer cell sensitivity of melanoma cells.

Pre-treatment of B16 melanoma cells with recombinant interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) markedly increased their lung-colonising capacity following i.v. injection into syngeneic mice as compared with control cells. A similar enhancement was observed following the injection of treated cells into athymic nude mice but not in athymic mice carrying the beige mutation. Pre-treatment of syngeneic mice with anti-asialo GM1 antibody effectively abrogated any interferon-induced increase in experimental metastatic activity. The same IFN-gamma treatment significantly increased resistance of B16 cells to splenic natural killer (NK) cell activity as determined by in vitro assays. IFN-alpha/beta pre-treatment of B16 cells decreased sensitivity to NK-cell-mediated lysis to a lesser extent than IFN-gamma and had no detectable effect upon the subsequent metastatic activity of the tumor cells. Class-I antigen expression was altered by these IFN treatments, with IFN-gamma causing dramatic increases in expression of H-2Db antigen, in a pattern consistent with the possibility that increased H-2 antigen expression on B16 cells led to decreased NK-cell sensitivity which was reflected by an increase in experimental metastatic capacity.