T and B cell development in pituitary deficient insulin-like growth factor-II transgenic dwarf mice.

Treatment of mice with IGF-I stimulates T and B cell development. We showed that overexpression of IGF-II in transgenic FVB/N mice only stimulated T cell development. In the present study, we further addressed the in vivo effects of IGF-II in the absence of IGF-I to get more insight into the potential abilities of IGF-II to influence T and B cell development. To this end, we studied lymphocyte development in IGF-II transgenic Snell dwarf mice that are prolactin, GH and thyroid-stimulating hormone deficient and as a consequence show low serum IGF-I levels. We showed that T cell development was stimulated to the same extent as in IGF-II transgenic FVB/N mice. Furthermore, IGF-II increased the number of nucleated bone marrow cells and the number of immature B cells without having an effect on the number of mature B cells in spleen and bone marrow. Our data show that IGF-II has preferential effects on T cell development compared with B development, and that these preferential effects also occur in the absence of measurable IGF-I levels.