Antiproliferative effects of four different cytokines on renal carcinoma cell lines.

The effect of alpha-Interferon (alpha-IFN), gamma-interferon (gamma-IFN), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) and interleukin-2 (Il-2) on growth of two renal cancer cell lines (DNT-11, HTB-44) was studied. Cell proliferation was measured by a tetrazolium based microculture assay (MTT) after incubation of tumor cells with different concentrations of these 4 cytokines over 72 hours. TNF-alpha showed no antiproliferative effect when cell line DNT-11 was tested, even at high concentrations of 1.000 ng/ml. Proliferation of the other cell line (HTB-44) was only slightly reduced (15%) at 100 ng/ml; a tenfold increase of TNF concentration could not improve these results. The antiproliferative effect of alpha-IFN was in the range of 22-26%. When gamma-IFN was used, both cell lines showed reduction of proliferation between 26% and 37%, respectively. Kinetic studies revealed that prolongation of incubation time for more than 72 hours was not able to improve these results. Il-2 did not influence cell proliferation of either cell line tested, even at high concentrations, as expected.