Enhancement of Macrophage Cytotoxicity by Overexpression of Exogenous NF-IL6 Gene.
NF-IL6 (Nuclear factor for IL-6 expression) is involved in inflammatory reaction, expression of acute-phase proteins and cytokines, apoptosis and suppression of tumor cells, and maintenance of macrophage immunological functions. To investigate the role of highly expressed exogenous NF-IL6 in macrophage tumor cytotoxicity, a recombinant expression plasmid, pCN, which harbored the coding region of NF-IL6, was transfected into murine primary cultured peritoneal resident macrophages by an improved DEAE-dextran method. Western blot showed the high expression of NF-IL6 in these macrophages. Then the tumor cytotoxicity of the NF-IL6-overexpressing macrophages from normal and nude mice was measured by an alkaline phosphatase assay, using the human hepatocarcinoma cell line SMMC 7721 as target cells. Results showed that the overexpression of NF-IL6 enhanced the tumor cytotoxicity in both types of macrophages, demonstrating that the expression level of the NF-IL6 gene was directly related to the tumoricidal activity in these cells.
Liu
Hu-Dan
HD
Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China. liudiga@sunm.shcnc.ac.cn
Liu
Ding-Gan
DG