Chemoattractive effect on the effector cells of the supernatants from melanoma cells transfected with the interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4 or IL-6 gene.

By using the Boyden chamber system, the chemoattractive activity of the supernatants from the B16 melanoma cells transfected with the interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4 or IL-6 gene was investigated. We found that supernatants from IL-2- or IL-6-gene-transfected B16 melanoma cells showed chemoattractive activity on natural killer (NK) cells, CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells, while the supernatants from IL-4-gene-transfected B16 melanoma cells showed chemotactic activity on macrophages but not on NK cells and T cells. Further, the chemoattractive activity of the supernatants from cytokine-gene-transfected B16 cells might be the direct effects of the cytokine that they have been engineered to secrete. These results indicate that reduced tumorigenicity and increased immunogenicity of cytokine-gene-transfected B16 cells may be attributed to the direct recruitment of immune effector cells by the secreted cytokine, which plays an important role in the induction of the local antitumor immunity.