Process for preparing murine interleukin 2 in the presence of interleukin 1 from an interleukin 2 nonproducer malignant cell line and cell line therefor

摘要

A process for producing murine IL-2 from malignant neoplastic cells which are incapable of IL-2 production by mitogen stimulation alone includes culturing murine leukemia or lymphoma cells in vitro in a protein- containing medium supplemented with various additives. A T cell mitogen and IL-1 are added to the culture medium as co-stimulants inducing the production of a supernate which contains IL-2. After a period of time, the supernate is collected and then assayed for IL-2 activity. Also in the present invention, IL-1 is utilized as a co- stimulant together with a suboptimum concentration of a T cell mitogen to induce IL-2 production in cell lines capable of generating IL-2 by mitogen stimulation alone. The use of IL-1 in these instances reduces the quantity of mitogen required to produce maximum levels of IL-2.