Priming of interferon production in human embryo fibroblasts by alpha, beta and gamma interferons.

Pretreatment of human embryo fibroblasts with homologous alpha, beta and gamma interferons (IFNs) exerted a priming effect on both the ordinarily poly I: C-induced and the superrinduced human IFN beta production. The priming activities of HuIFN-alpha and beta were equivalent while HuIFN-gamma proved to be somewhat inferior in this respect. DEAE-dextran enhanced the efficacy of induction when it was used in combination only with poly I:C. No such effect could be observed in the superinduced cultures. A correlation was found between the amount of IFN produced by the primed or superinduced human embryo fibroblasts and the quantity of extractable polyadenylated translatable IFN mRNA in these cells.