Humoral regulation of cell-mediated immunity to syngeneic tumor.

Inoculation i.p. of C57BL/6 mice with FBL-3 cells, a syngeneic Friend virus-induced leukemia, results in progressive growth of ascitic tumors; in contrast, s.c. inoculation of FBL-3 cells produces transient, localized tumor growth; the recipients are then subsequently resistant to further i.p. challenge of this tumor. Experiments were performed to study the effects of humoral factors that might be present in the ascitic fluid and that could affect the growth of the tumors and the host immune response. It was found that ascitic fluids obtained from various murine tumors could indeed promote the s.c. growth of FBL-3 cells. Furthermore, administration of these ascitic fluids was found to suppress the induction of both the primary and secondary cell-mediated cytotoxic responses to FBL-3 cells in vivo and in vitro and to inhibit the effector phase of these cell-mediated cytotoxic reactions in vitro. These studies indicate that the ascitic fluids obtained from tumor-bearing hosts contain humoral factors that can promote tumor growth and suppress immune responses.