A colony-stimulating factor for neutrophil granulocytes: a marked increase of its production by the addition of sodium butyrate and lipopolysaccharide in serum-free culture of RSP-2 X P3 cells.

Sodium butyrate, lithium acetate, and hydroxyurea given to serum-free culture of RSP-2 X P3 cells notably reduced the rate of cell proliferation but markedly enhanced the production of such a colony-stimulating factor (CSF) as one that stimulated predominantly neutrophilic granulocyte colony formation in mouse bone marrow cell cultures (Tsuneoka and Shikita, 1984). On the other hand, the production of macrophage CSF was not increased in the butyrate-treated RSP-2 X 3 cells. Butyrate also failed to enhance either macrophage CSF or neutrophil CSF production in L X P3 (mouse fibroblast line), Huk-1 X P3 (human kidney cell line) or Nil2C2 (hamster embryo fibroblast line) cells. The addition of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) together with butyrate resulted in further pronounced enhancement of the neutrophil CSF production in RSP-2 X P3 cells, while the cells did not develop tolerance against LPS upon repeated challenge. The yield of neutrophil CSF was thus increased by about 45 times that of the control during continuous culture for 12 days. Large-scale culture of the cells under these conditions must be an excellent source of a CSF for neutrophil granulocytes.