Antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity of leukemic cells from the patients with acute myeloid leukemia to human erythrocytes coated with anti-D antiserum.

We examined the antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) of normal leukocytes from healthy volunteers, immature neutrophils from 4 patients with chronic myelocytic leukemia (CML) and leukemic cells from 22 patients with acute myeloid leukemia, employing human erythrocyte targets. Ability to mediate ADCC was demonstrated only in monocytes among normal leukocytes and in leukemic cells from all the 6 patients with acute myelomonocytic or monocytic leukemia (AMMoL, AMoL). CML immature neutrophils and leukemic cells from 14 patients with acute myeloblastic or promyeloblastic leukemia displayed very low levels of ADCC. In the remaining 2 patients with acute myeloblastic leukemia, the ADCC levels were high. We described the usefulness of this ADCC assay for distinguishing AMMoL or AMoL from other types of acute myeloid leukemia.