In vitro studies on the adjuvanticity of Brucella fractions.

Two Brucella fractions, the murein-linked fraction PI and the murein-free fraction SF, behave as in vitro adjuvants for primary anti-sheep erythrocyte responses: added to Mishell and Dutton-type cultures of spleen cells from B6/DB F1 mice they significantly enhance the number of direct anti-sheep erythrocyte PFC observed on day 5. They exert both nonspecific, polyclonal activating effects and antigen-dependent specific adjuvanticity. These two functions, however, differ in their dose responses and in their cellular requirements and can therefore be dissociated. Thus, polyclonal activation requires high doses of the "adjuvant fraction," is enhanced by adherent-cell depletion, and is not impaired by T-cell depletion. Specific adjuvanticity, on the other hand, requires lower doses of the adjuvant fractions (very high doses are in fact suppressive) and is T-cell and adherent-cell dependent. Moreover, adjuvanticity can be transferred to unstimulated spleen cells (or restored in adherent-cell-depleted populations) by PI- or SF-stimulated adherent cells or by the filtered supernatants of such cultures; adjuvant-soluble factors are therefore involved in the phenomena of adherent, T- and B-cell cooperation required for the adjuvanticity of Brucella fractions.