Stimulation of humoral immunity by peptidoglycan monomer from Brevibacterium divaricatum.

Peptidoglycan monomer (PGM), a water soluble and nontoxic disaccharide pentapeptide unit obtained from Brevibacterium divaricatum, was administered intravenously into mice, and the humoral immune response to sheep erythrocytes was assayed by means of Jerne's technique for plaque-forming cells (PFC) in the spleen. The PFC response was evidently stimulated. The counts were increased to practically the same extent over a great range of doses of PGM (from 25 to 1600 microgram per animal), and the effect was present in the mice immunised with optimal, as well as in those immunised with suboptimal, doses of antigen. The magnitude of the immunostimulation depend only on the timing of PGM administration: it was maximal if PGM was injected 1 or 2 days after the antigen. In vitro, in a 4-day culture of spleen cells, PGM did not stimulate PFC formation. We conclude that stimulation of the humoral immune response to sheep red blood cell antigens by PGM probably occurs without cell multiplication and probably involves more than simply a contact of immunocompetent cells with PGM.