A COMPARISON BETWEEN 2 METHODS FOR MEASURING TUMOR-NECROSIS-FACTOR IN BIOLOGICAL-FLUIDS

The current study was undertaken to compare two methods for the efficiency of measuring tumor necrosis factor (TNF-alpha) in biological fluids, which is species undependent, reliable, sensitive, simple and not expensive. We have compared the MTT tetrazolium cytotoxic assay [1, 2] and the H-3-thymidine (H-3-TdR) incorporation cytostatic assay for measuring the anti-tumor activity of human recombinant TNF-alpha, of human colonic tissue and of supernatants of in vitro stimulated human and rat peritoneal macrophages. Two target cell-lines, namely murine myelomonocytic leukaemia WEHI-164- and L-929-transformed murine fibroblast cell-lines, were used in the MTT assay. The L-929 line was also used in the H-3-TdR assay. WEHI-164 was more sensitive than the L-929 cell-line in the MTT cytotoxic assay. Furthermore, the MTT assay was more sensitive to TNF-alpha than the H-3-TdR assay. Both methods can be used for the detection of anti-tumor activity in biological fluids but the MTT cytotoxic method has the advantage of being more sensitive and more simple.