Chemotactic factor binding and functional capacity: a comparison between human granulocytes and differentiated HL-60 cells.

In the presence of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), the leukemic promyelocytic cell line HL-60 will differentiate into mature polymorphonuclear granulocytes. In the present report, we compare chemotactic factor binding and function in HL-60 cells with that of normal human granulocytes using the chemotactic peptide N-formylmethionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (FMLP) as ligand. The cellular response measured as CL was changed as a result of storage or conditioning of normal peripheral blood cells. With these cells, a conditioning procedure at room temperature resulted in a pronounced increase in the CL response. The increase of the CL response was probably a result of increased expression of cryptic receptors, since the changes of the oxidative response to FMLP was accompanied by increased binding of the peptide to the cell surface. Scatchard analysis revealed that the increased binding was due to an increased number of receptors. In differentiated HL-60 cells, conditioning neither led to increased production of oxidative metabolites, nor to any increased binding of the peptide. The data thus indicate that many FMLP receptors could reside in a cryptic site that is not accessible to extracellular ligands, and that conditioning results in an increased exposure of these receptors, followed by an increased oxidative response to the ligand in normal cells but not in mature HL-60 cells.