Identification of the human analogue of a regulator that induces differentiation in murine leukaemic cells

Abstract

We have recently purified murine granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)1, a regulatory glycoprotein which stimulates granulocyte colony formation from committed murine precursor cells in semi-solid agar cultures2. G-CSF is one of a family of colony-stimulating factors that regulate the growth and differentiation of granulocytes and macrophages3-5. While the other murine CSFs (granulocyte-macrophage (GM)-CSF, macrophage (M)-CSF and multi-CSF) show little or no differentiation-inducing activity on murine myelomonocytic leukaemia cell lines, G-CSF (or MGI-26) is able to induce the production of terminally differentiated cells from WEHI-3B and other myeloid leukaemia cell lines 6-8. More ..