The antineoplastic effects of tuftsin and tuftsinyltuftsin on B16/5B melanoma and L1210 cells.

The intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of tuftsin, Thr-Lys-Pro-Arg, into C57BL/6 mice that were injected with B16/5B melanoma cells, resulted in a considerable suppression and elimination of solid tumor growth. While 100% of control animals exhibited tumor growth, 38% of the treated animals failed to show tumor formation for the duration of the experiment, 60-80 days. The octapeptide, tuftsinyltuftsin, was effective at 3 ng per mouse as was a dose of 2 and 20 micrograms per mouse. In each case there was a significant number of mice free of tumors. The octapeptide was also quite effective against L1210 cells resulting in the survival of 35-40% of the treated animals. The lethal effect of increased superoxide, O X 2, production by tuftsin treatment may explain the antineoplastic effect of the tetrapeptide. This may result not only from higher concentrations of O X 2 but also from the potentially lethal effects of H2O2 and OH X radical, both of which are products of O X 2 metabolism.