Effect of (dl)-5-methyltetrahydrofolate on lymphoid leukemia cell lines

We studied the effect of (dl)-5-methyltetrahydrofolate (mTHF) on the lymphoid cell lines BALM 3, CCRF-SB, CEM, Daudi, MOLT 4 and P3HR1, employing doses in the mM range. The growth of all the lines studied was inhibited by mTHF in a dose-dependent fashion. mTHF demonstrated a substantial cytocidal effect on leukemic lymphoid cells of up to 3 log, as measured by limiting dilution analysis, at a concentration of 10(-3) M. At this dose normal human lymphocyte viability was not affected, and their mitogen-induced proliferation was only slightly impaired. We tested the effect of high doses of mTHF on a clone of CEM cells (CEM-MTXr) infected with the pSDHT retrovirus able to transduce a dominant-acting gene encoding a mutant, less efficient, dihydrofolate reductase. CEM-MTXr cells were inhibited by high doses of mTHF to the same degree as the parental line, thus suggesting that the enzymatic reactions leading to folate reduction are not involved in the cytocidal effect of mTHF.