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Growth factor gene activation and clonal heterogeneity in an autostimulatory myeloid leukemia.

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Victoria, Australia.

ABSTRACT

Cell lines were isolated from an in vivo-passaged myelomonocytic leukemia, WEHI-274, that arose in a mouse infected with the Abelson leukemia virus-Moloney leukemia virus complex. Clones were isolated in vitro in the presence or absence of a source of a hemopoietic growth factor, interleukin-3 (IL-3), and were divisible into three distinct classes. All three classes were leukemogenic in vivo. In vitro, the class I clone grew slowly at low cell density but responded with an increased growth rate to IL-3, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), and autoconditioned medium. Supernatants of these cultures contained a factor with the biological, biochemical, and antigenic properties of IL-3. Class II clones grew better in vitro at low cell densities than did the class I clone and also responded with an increased growth rate to IL-3, GM-CSF, and autoconditional medium but produced GM-CSF rather than IL-3. In contrast, class III clones died in vitro at all cell densities unless exogenous IL-3 or GM-CSF was added. Moreover, they produced no autostimulatory factors. In the class I and class II clones, one allele of the respective IL-3 or GM-CSF gene is rearranged, and in each case, grossly abnormal RNA transcripts of the rearranged gene are present. Neither rearrangements nor abnormal RNA transcripts of the IL-3 or GM-CSF gene were detected in the class III clones. All three classes exhibited a common rearrangement of the c-myb gene, which suggested that all were derived from the one ancestral cell. These experiments demonstrate that two distinct and independent autostimulatory events were involved in the progression of a single disease.