IL-5 up-regulates but IL-4 down-regulates IL-2R expression on a cloned B lymphoma line

Both IL-4 and IL-5 demonstrate B cell growth activity. IL-5 can render a cloned neoplastic B cell line, BCL1-CL-3 cells, responsive to IL-2, whereas IL-4 has no such activity. The response to IL-5 and IL-2 proceeds in two phases: the first phase which clearly depends upon IL-5 is the obvious increase in number of high affinity IL-2R (3.1-fold) with modest increase of low affinity IL-2R (1.2-fold) and gain of the ability of facilitated IL-2-binding and internalization of IL-2, and the second phase which is induced by IL-2 in the IL-5-stimulated CL-3 cells comprises the striking increase of low affinity IL-2R (8.5-fold). Kinetic study has revealed that high affinity IL-2R expressed on CL-3 cells begins to increase at 6 h and reaches to maximum at 12 h after stimulation with IL-5 or IL-5 plus IL-2, whereas low affinity IL-2R expression increases at 18 h and becomes maximal at 24 h after stimulation of CL-3 cells with IL-5 and IL-2. However, in the presence of IL-4, IL-5 cannot induce an increase in number of high affinity IL-2R on CL-3 cells. Thus, CL-3 cells stimulated with the mixture of IL-5 and IL-4 cannot respond to IL-2, and fail to show up-regulated expression of low affinity IL-2R. IL-4 also has a capacity to modestly interfere with the action of IL-2 to up-regulate low affinity IL-2R expression on IL-5-pretreated CL-3 cells. Thus, this monoclonal B cell system provides an excellent model system to define the roles of IL-5 and IL-4 involved in the B cell differentiation and to characterize the properties of B cells competent to IL-2 stimulation and the signal transduction mechanism which operates through IL-2/IL-2R system.