Production of T-cell lines with inhibitory or stimulatory activity against syngeneic tumors in vivo. A preliminary report.

We obtained Thy-I-positive cells directly from growing methylcholanthrene-induced (MCA-1510) sarcomas using fluorescence-activated cell sorting, then cultured these lymphocytes in medium containing Interleukin-2 and tested their activity in vivo against various MCA-sarcoma lines with the Winn assay. We found that cultured T cells from small MCA-1510 tumors (17 days after transplantation) significantly inhibited the growth of that particular sarcoma, but not of three other MCA-tumor lines tested, while cultured T cells from large MCA-1510 sarcomas (41 days after transplantation) significantly enhanced the growth of that tumor, but not of an unrelated tumor, MCA-1460. The former cells were primarily Lyt-1+, 2+ while the latter were primarily Lyt-1+, 2+.