Purification and biochemical characterization of a human autocrine growth factor produced by Epstein-Barr virus-transformed B cells.

Autocrine growth factor for Epstein-Barr virus-transformed human B cells (aBGF), a protein that is constitutively produced by the human EBV-transformed B cell line 5/2, has been purified from serum-free conditioned medium. The purification involved sequential ammonium sulfate precipitation, ion exchange chromatography, gel filtration, and reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography. The purified protein has a m.w. of 16,000 in NaDodSO4/polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and an isoelectric point between 7.0 and 8.0. The relative molecular mass 16,000 form exists in equilibrium with dimeric and tetrameric forms. aBGF supports the growth of EBV-transformed B cells, which have been deprived of their own conditioned medium. The purified aBGF is fully effective at 0.5 ng/ml and has no interleukin 1 activity in the lymphocyte activation factor assay. Because several randomly selected lines of EBV-transformed cells and one EBV-negative lymphoma cell line both produce aBGF activity and show growth dependency on aBGF and because stimulation of normal B cells with anti-immunoglobulin M is increased by aBGF, we propose that aBGF has general significance for growth control of human B cells.