Treatment with monocyte-derived partially purified GM-CSF but not G-CSF aborts the development of transplanted chloroleukemia in rats.

We have previously demonstrated that cultured rat chloroleukemia cells, MIA C51, will terminally differentiate to macrophages when treated with rat lung-conditioned medium in vitro and in vivo. In the present study we fractionated rat monocyte-conditioned medium by ultrafiltration according to molecular size. The fraction with molecular weight (mol wt) 30 to 50 Kd containing partially purified granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) activity caused the differentiation of C51 cells to macrophages in vitro and in diffusion chambers in vivo. Treatment of young rats with this fraction aborted the development of chloroleukemia from transplanted C51 cells. In contrast, the fraction with mol wt 10 to 30 Kd containing virtually all the G-CSF activity exhibited no differentiation activity either in vitro or in vivo. It is concluded that in this rat myelogenous leukemia model partially purified GM-CSF but not G-CSF contains the effector molecule(s) causing terminal differentiation of C51 cells and tumor cell rejection.