Long-term exposure to retrovirally expressed granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor induces a nonneoplastic granulocytic and progenitor cell hyperplasia without tissue damage in mice.

Murine marrow cells infected with a retroviral vector (MPZen) bearing a granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) cDNA insert were transplanted into lethally irradiated recipients to study the effects of autocrine production of G-CSF in normal hemopoietic cells. Most animals remained healthy with no evidence of tissue damage throughout the observation period (4-30 wk) despite high circulating G-CSF levels (range 2,000-26,000,000 U/ml). A dramatic neutrophilic granulocytosis was observed in all hemopoietic tissues with neutrophilic infiltration occurring in the lung and liver. Spleen, peritoneal, and peripheral blood cellularity increased approximately three-, two-, and eightfold, respectively, but total bone marrow cell counts remained unchanged. Progenitor cell numbers granulocyte-macrophage colony-forming cell (GM-CFC), granulocyte colony-forming cell (G-CFC), burst-forming unit-erythroid (BFU-E), colony-forming unit-erythroid (CFU-E) and mixed colony-forming cells (Mix-CFC) were elevated between 10-100-fold in the spleen, peritoneal cavity, and peripheral blood, but were unaffected or slightly depressed in the marrow. No tumors developed in syngeneic recipients transplanted with bone marrow or spleen cells from such mice, confirming the nonneoplastic nature of the hyperplasia induced by chronic G-CSF stimulation. These experiments also indicated the stable integration of MPZen vectors in infected cells, as evident from the continuous expression of the inserted gene for at least 6 mo, and from the ability of infected stem cells from the primary recipients to express the gene in lethally irradiated secondary recipients.