Cellular and virological studies directed to the pathogenesis of the human myelogenous leukemias

1. Work over the past years and especially results of the past few years indicate that type-C viral or viral related genetic information exists in humans. 2. We do not know how this information entered humans or whether it causes disease, but it is of interest that the probes from the viruses used to detect this information are from the very same viruses which we find can affect growth and differentiation of some human hematopoietic cells. 3. The status of actual virus isolates from humans, though encouraging because of similarities of isolates from five different laboratories, remain very perplexing and so far have not been especially informative to human leukemogenesis. 4. In the near future we hope to clone in bacteria the viral related sequences detected in human DNA in order to more precisely determine their chemical and biological properties. The HL-60 system may also afford an opportunity to purify receptors for CSF. When CSF and other, perhaps more important, regulatory factors are purified, we would like to determine if they bind differently to leukemic and normal cells.