Human germ cell tumor cell lines express novel leukemia inhibitory factor transcripts encoding differentially localized proteins

Abstract

The polyfunctional cytokine leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) has been implicated in the maintenance of many stem and progenitor cell populations and as an autocrine growth factor for many tumor cell populations, including germ cell tumors. Studies of LIF transcript expression in germ cell tumor cell lines identified two novel human LIF transcripts, hLIF-M and hLIF-T, containing noncoding alternate first exons that are conserved among all reported LIF genes. Embryonal carcinoma (EC) cell lines expressed these transcripts at consistent levels and hLIF-M was generally the predominant LIF transcript in these cells. This expression pattern was characteristic of EC cells since variable independent..