Effects of interleukin-1 (IL-1) and interleukin-2 (IL-2) on the in vivo growth and differentiation of progenitors of natural killer (NK) cells.

We evaluated the possible modulating activity of interleukin-1 (IL-1) and interleukin-2 (IL-2) on in vivo growth of mouse progenitors of Natural Killer (NK) cells. Our data show that both IL-1 and IL-2 are able to stimulate the maturation of NK reactivity of infant mice as well as the regeneration of NK reactivity of lethally irradiated and reconstituted bone marrow chimeras.