title: Correlation of growth of tumours in NC-cell-depleted mice with NC- and NK-cell-mediated lysis in vitro.
abstract: The anti-tumour surveillance activity of natural cytotoxic (NC) cells was studied in vivo using the transplantable tumours WEHI-164 fibrosarcoma, MPC-II plasmacytoma, WEHI-7 T-lymphoma, B16 melanoma and EL-4 thymoma in syngeneic and semi-allogeneic mice. Experimentally, mice were treated with the anti-NC-I.I monoclonal antibody (MAb) IC4 to abrogate splenic NC activity. This was followed by s.c. inoculation of MTD100 doses of the tumours. Comparison of the diameters of the tumours in the anti-NC-I.I-treated mice with control mice using non-parametric statistics showed significantly faster growth of WEHI-164 (p less than 0.01), MPC-II (p less than 0.05) and WEHI-7 (p less than 0.05) when the mean tumour diameters were less than 15 mm in the anti-NC-I.I-treated mice. Significantly faster growth was also observed in anti-NC-I.I-treated mice with the B16 tumour (p less than 0.05), but at a later stage of growth, when the tumour diameter was greater than 15 mm. In vitro, WEHI-164, MPC-II and WEHI-7 were shown to be predominantly sensitive to lysis by mouse splenic NC cells, while B16 was predominantly lysed by splenic natural-killer (NK) cells. Anti-NC-I.I treatment of mice did not affect the growth of EL-4 in vivo and in vitro experiments with anti-NK-I.I and anti-NC-I.I MAb indicated that this tumour was lysed by sub-sets of NK and NC cells distinct from those which lysed the other tumours. We conclude that, in mice at least, NC cells have an in vivo role in controlling the growth of some transplantable tumours, and this correlates with the in vitro NC cell lysis of these same tumours.
authors.affiliation: Discipline of Surgical Science, Faculty of Medicine, University of Newcastle, N.S.W., Australia.
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Smart
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Farrelly
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Burton
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003602:Cytotoxicity, Immunologic; D007694:Killer Cells, Natural / Q000502:physiology*; D008264:Macrophages / Q000502:physiology; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008808:Mice, Inbred CBA; D009368:Neoplasm Transplantation; D009374:Neoplasms, Experimental / Q000473:pathology*