Immuno-suppressive effect of human alphafetoprotein: a cross species study

Alphafetoprotein (AFP) is the major serum protein of fetal life in human and other mammalian species. The phylogenetical conservatism of AFP demonstrated by extensive immunological cross reaction between human AFP and AFP of a number of species, suggest that AFP plays a general role in the successful pregnancy of all mammalian species. The present work clearly demonstrates the antiproliferative effect of human AFP on lymphocytes, harvested from normal human donors. The inhibitory effect of human AFP is quite significant in the same dose during blastic transformations of the lymphocytes. In this study, peripheral blood mononuclear cells were induced to blastic transformations with phytohaemagglutinin (PHA-M) and the effect of AFP was quantified by the incorporation of [3H]-thymidine into newly synthesized DNA during 24 hrs pulse. Moreover, human AFP shows similar immuno-suppressive effect to other species of lymphocytes also. In all the three species (mouse, rat and hamster) studied, a parallelism was noted in their respective percentage of thymidine incorporation values at the comparable doses. These results establish a cross species inhibitory effect of human AFP and it may be stated that this effect is directly targeted on T-helper cells and has no interaction with interleukin-2 (IL-2).