Immunobiology of Granulocyte Macrophage Colony Stimulating Factor Driven Human Myeloid Cells

Abstract

Granulocyte Macrophage-Colony Stimulating Factor (GM-CSF) is well known to have growth-promoting activities on hematopoietic cell lineages. GM-CSF is known to stimulate multipotent progenitors depending on its concentration. Both in human and mouse, it was cloned from cDNA library of activated T lymphocytes. Various subsets of T lymphocytes have been found to produce GM-CSF on activation, although its direct effect on the T lymphocytes is not yet very clear. Most of the demonstrated effects of GM-CSF are believed to be mediated by the antigen presenting cells. Therapeutic uses of GMCSF, like G-CSF (Granulocyte Colony Stimulatory Factor), mainly involve treating neutropenia of different etiologies. Specifically, for treating chemotherapy-induced neutropenia and for expansion of hematopoietic progenitors prior to autologous transplantation, GMCSF and G-CSF have been in extensive use. Although they surely have growth-promoting activity on multi-lineage hematopoietic cells, possibilities are there that they also might have some immunomodulatory activities brought about by differential effects on different immune cells