In vivo stimulation of murine granulopoiesis by human urinary extract from patients with aplastic anemia.

Significant in vivo stimulation of granulopoiesis was induced in mice by the administration of an extract from the urine of patients with aplastic anemia (AA). Sialic acid has been identified as an important molecular component for the in vivo biological activity of this granulopoietic factor, "granulopoietin," which is distinct and different from endotoxin. Urine from patients with AA was successively fractionated by Sephadex G-50 and DEAE-cellulose chromatography. The resultant extract, which we refer to as AA urinary extract, contained approximately equal to 44 international units of erythropoietin per A unit of protein and induced 15,000 colonies of granulocyte/macrophage precursor cells (granulocyte/macrophage colony-forming units, CFU-gm) per A unit of protein with mouse bone marrow. Eight daily intraperitoneal injections of this extract in mice induced a 6.2-fold increase in peripheral blood granulocytes and a 14.6-fold increase of splenic CFU-gm, with concomitant increases in the proliferation rates of CFU-gm in both bone marrow and spleen. Pretreatment of the AA urinary extract with sialidase significantly diminished these granulopoietic effects in vivo (P less than 0.001). In contrast, both extracts (i.e., native AA and sialidase-treated AA urinary extracts) revealed high granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor activity in vitro when clonal assays were performed with mouse bone marrow. Increased in vivo and in vitro granulopoietic activities were found in the concanavalin A "break-through" fraction, indicating that these activities were due to protein(s) that did not bind to the lectin. These results reveal that this urinary extract from patients with AA is capable of inducing significant granulopoiesis in mice and that sialic acid is an important component in the maintenance of this granulopoietic effect in vivo but not in vitro.