Are LIF and related cytokines functionally equivalent?

Leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) is structurally related to interleukin-6 (IL-6), oncostatin M (OSM), and ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF). Since LIF-deficient mice do not exhibit overt phenotypic effects in cell types known to be targets for LIF action in vitro, we examined the ability of IL-6, OSM, and CNTF to reproduce the effects of LIF in five different bioassays. OSM, CNTF, and LIF are able to promote embryonic stem cell growth and to maintain them in an undifferentiated state as marked by a high alkaline phosphatase activity (ED50 are, respectively, 0.5, 3 and 1 ng/ml). Whereas LIF and OSM maintain close to 100% of ES cells in an undifferentiated state, CNTF, at optimal concentrations, prevents differentiation of only 60% of the ES population. Murine 7TD1 hybridoma cell growth is induced only in the presence of IL-6 (ED50 = 0.1 ng/ml). Both LIF and OSM stimulate DA1a cell proliferation (ED50 are, respectively, 1 and 12 ng/ml). OSM appears, therefore, to act as a weak agonist of LIF-dependent processes on murine cells, however, with a 10-fold lower specific activity than that of LIF, which is in agreement with human OSM cross-reacting with the murine LIF-R. Though IL-6, LIF, and OSM all stimulate haptoglobin and fibrinogen production by human HepG2 hepatoma cells, the dose-response curves of these three factors exhibit very different characteristics. CNTF stimulates acute-phase protein production by HepG2 cells only at high concentrations (greater than 1 microgram/ml). A549 epithelial cells are subjected to growth inhibition only in the presence of OSM (ED50 = 6 ng/ml), even though they expressed LIF-R and gp130 transcripts. These data suggest that OSM and LIF act on human cells through different receptors. Altogether, these results indicate that none of the factors examined in this study are precisely interchangeable in terms of their biological actions.