Production of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor by Abelson virus-induced tumorigenic mast cell lines

We have recently described a system that supports the development of continuously growing and tumorigenic cell lines after infection of individual multilineage hematopoietic colonies with Abelson murine leukemia virus (A-MuLV). We now provide definitive evidence that these transformed lines express features characteristic of mast cells. Although these lines have been maintained in some cases for more than a year in the absence of exogenous growth factors other than those present in fetal calf serum, colony formation could consistently after 2 months, and variably after 5 months, be shown to be increased several fold when pokeweed mitogen-stimulated spleen cell conditioned medium (CM) was added to the cultures. CM from the A-MuLV-transformed lines was then tested for its ability to stimulate hematopoietic colony formation by cells from both fetal and adult tissues. Four of four randomly selected cell lines produced factors that were active on erythropoietic, granulopoietic, and in some cases pluripotent progenitors. Removal of viral particles from the CM from one of the lines (27d1) by either heat inactivation or high-speed centrifugation did not alter the colony-stimulating activity detected. When CM from 27d1 cells was tested for its ability to stimulate the proliferation of interleukin 3 (IL3) granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)-dependent FDC-P1 cells, a positive result was obtained. This stimulatory activity was not reduced in the presence of neutralizing anti-IL 3 immunoglobulin (Ig), suggesting that the activity detected was GM-CSF and not IL 3. This was confirmed by the lack of expression of the IL 3 gene in 27d1 cells as determined by Northern analysis of 27d1 cell RNA. Furthermore, S1 analysis of mRNA from 27d1 cells as well as two other lines indicated that the GM-CSF gene in all three was transcriptionally active. Taken together, these data suggest that A-MuLV transformation of normal mast cells or their precursors under certain conditions commonly activates the production of GM-CSF.