Role of spontaneous and interleukin-2-induced natural killer cell activity in the cytotoxicity and rejection of Fas+ and Fas- tumor cells

In the current study, we investigated whether the naive, poly I:C or interleukin-2 (IL-2)-induced natural killer (NK)/lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells use perforin and/or pas ligand (FasL) to mediated cytotoxicity. We correlated these findings with the ability of mice to reject syngeneic Fas(+) and Fas(-) tumor cells either spontaneously or after IL-2 treatment. The spontaneous NK-cell-mediated cytotoxicity was primarily perforin based, whereas the poly I:C and IL-2-induced NK/LAK activity was both FasL and perforin dependent. L1210 Fas(+) tumor targets were more sensitive than L1210 Fas(-) targets to poly I:C and IL-2-induced cytotoxicity in wild-type, gld/gld, and perforin knockout mice. When L1210 Fas(+) and Fas(-) tumor cells were injected subcutaneously (sc) or intraperitoneally into syngeneic mice, Fas(-) tumor cells caused mortality earlier than Fas(+) tumor cells. Also, approximately 20% of the mice injected sc with L1210 Fas(-) tumor cells survived the challenge(>60 days), whereas all mice injected similarly with L1210 Fas(-) tumor cells died. When immunotherapy using IL-2 (10,000 U, three times/d for a week, followed by once/d for an additional week) was attempted in mice injected sc with tumor cells, IL-2 treatment was very effective against mice bearing L1210 Fas(+) (40% survival) but not L1210 Fas(-) (0% survival) tumors. These data correlated with the finding that the LAK cells from IL-2-injected mice caused increased cytotoxicity against L1210 Fas(+) when compared with L1210 Fas(-) targets. Also, L1210 Fas(+) tumor-bearing mice showed increased tumor-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) activity when compared with those bearing L1210 Fas(-) tumor cells. Together our studies show for the first time that expression of pas on tumor targets makes them more immunogenic as well as susceptible to CTL- and IL-2-induced LAK activity. The Fas(+) tumor cells are also more responsive to immunotherapy with IL-2. (C) 1998 by The American Society of Hematology.