Cholera toxin discriminates between murine T lymphocyte proliferation stimulated by activators of protein kinase C and proliferation stimulated by IL-2. Possible role for intracellular cAMP.

The regulation of the activation of T lymphocyte proliferation is not well understood. It is known that the tumor promoter, PMA, which activates protein kinase C (PKC), can induce the proliferation of several murine CTL clones; in combination with calcium ionophores, which raise the level of intracellular Ca2+, PMA can also stimulate the proliferation of several HTL clones. Activation of the TCR is believed to result in the liberation of diacylglycerol, which is an activator of PKC, and inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate, which stimulates an increase in intracellular levels of calcium. We now report that pretreatment with cholera toxin (CT) inhibits the proliferation of murine T cell clones stimulated through the TCR/CD3 complex. In addition, CT-pretreatment blocks the proliferation of CTL clones activated with PMA or of HTL clones activated with PMA + calcium ionophore. In contrast, CT-pre-treatment inhibits much less effectively (100- to 1000-fold) the proliferation of these T cell clones stimulated with IL-2. Furthermore, activators of PKC, but not IL-2, potentiate the CT-induced cAMP elevation in T cell clones. The ability of CT to inhibit much more effectively the proliferation triggered by putative activators of PKC than that induced by IL-2 may be mediated by cAMP-dependent mechanisms.