Phenotyping human leukemic T-cell lines: enzyme markers, surface antigens, and cytogenetics.

We have compared phenotypic markers for a series of established human leukemic T-cell lines collected from different laboratories. Cell lines were tested first for genetic markers using polymorphic enzymes and then for expression of T lymphoid cell surface differentiation antigens using monoclonal antibodies. Chromosomal analysis was used as an additional method for identification of selected cell lines. On the basis of enzyme markers, it was possible to assign each of the cell lines examined to one of nine different groups. With two exceptions, surface antigen phenotypes for each of 12 cell lines were clearly distinctive. Thus, some groups of cell lines indistinguishable by enzyme markers could be further subdivided by surface antigen phenotyping. However, significant quantitative variation in expression of individual antigens was observed. In addition, surface antigen expression was not uniform in different subcultures of one cell line studied in detail. These results indicate that leukemic T-cell lines cannot be used generally as simple models of surface antigen expression in normal T-cell differentiation.