Macrophage-Like Tumor Cells as Tools to Study Chemoattractive Activity

Macrophage-like tumor cells can be obtained in large quantities as rather homogeneous populations, making these cells useful for chemotaxis assays. Therefore, macrophage-like cells J774A, WEHI-3, P38801, IC-2i, and NCTC i469, all of murine origin, and U937 of human origin, were tested for chemo-tactic activity to a number of chemoattractive agents, such as casein, an N-formyl tetrapeptide (N-formyl-L-norleucyl-L-Ieucyl-L-phenylalanyl-L-tyrosine), and culture supernatants of murine SL2 lymphoma cells. J774A and WEHI-3 macrophage-like cells of murine (BALB/c) origin expressed the strongest chemotactic activity to casein and N-formyl tetrapeptide, respectively. The results show that: very standardized chemotaxis assays can be performed using these cell lines; these assays require appropriate cell line-stimulus combinations; there are substantial differences among cell lines as to sensitiv-ity to various chemoattractive substances; macrophage cell lines and func-tional mutants may be helpful for the study of receptors for chemotaxins and the study of transducer signals for chemotaxis