Human pituitary tissue secretes a potent growth factor for chondrocyte proliferation.

We report the secretion from human pituitary tumor fragments in organ culture of a potent mitogen for chondrocyte proliferation. Primary human pituitary cell and organ cultures were established from pituitary fragments obtained from patients with acromegaly, prolactinomas, and nonfunctional adenomas. The conditioned culture medium contained a mitogenic factor(s) that stimulated rabbit fetal chondrocyte proliferation, causing up to an 8-fold increase in cell number when added to Ham's F-10 medium in the presence of 10% fetal bovine serum. Blood leaking into the surgical field after the adenomectomy is known to contain very high concentrations of pituitary hormones. Serum samples, obtained from this venous "ooze" collected at the site of pituitary surgery, also were found to contain chondrocyte growth-promoting activity. Some venous serum samples stimulated chondrocyte proliferation in a dose-dependent manner down to a 1:10 dilution of 1 microliter serum, indicating that the material being secreted was very potent indeed. Gel filtration on Sephadex G-100 and analytical gel isoelectric focusing of culture media or serum samples from the pituitary fossa demonstrated that the growth factor secreted from the pituitary tumor fragments as well as from the venous serum is similar, if not identical, to chondrocyte growth factor (mol wt, 43,000; pI 7.6-7.9) purified from human pituitaries collected at autopsy. These results suggest that the chondrocyte growth-promoting factor(s) may not only be secreted by pituitary tumor fragments but by normal human pituitary tissue as well.