The colony-stimulating factors and myeloid leukaemia.

Abstract

The production of granulocytes and macrophages is under the control of at least four well defined haemopoietic growth factors or colony-stimulating factors (CSF's) which differ in their actions within the hierarchical organization of haemopoietic progenitor cells and in the different cell lineages they affect. Multi-CSF has an extremely broad haemopoietic specificity, GM-CSF stimulates all granulocyte and macrophage progenitor cells and G-CSF and M-CSF have actions essentially restricted to the granulocyte or macrophage cell lineages, respectively. They are each, however, required for cell survival, proliferation, differentiation and mature cell activation within the cell lineages they act o..