Establishment of a human malignant T lymphoma cell line carrying retrovirus-like particles with RT activity.

We have established an IL-2 independent malignant lymphoma line (CM-1) from peripheral T lymphocytes donated by a female patient with nervous system disease, the biological characteristics of CM-1 cells was studied in this paper. Another T lymphocytes, such as peripheral T lymphocytes donated by a male patient with multiple sclerosis, could be transformed into a malignant lymphoma line by using filtered supernatant of the CM-1 cultured medium, thus the CM-2 cell line was established. The CM-1 and CM-2 cells were transplanted by subcutaneous inoculation into nude mice, and could cause the occurrence of typical malignant lymphoma. The observation of electron micrographs suggested the existence of virions in the CM-1 and CM-2 cells, and these virions were similar to retrovirus in the ultra-structure characteristics. It was found that this virus possesses reverse transcriptase activity. Results obtained from serological assay, molecular hybridization and PCR excluded the existence of other human viruses, which were commonly used in our laboratory. The unknown virus possesses strong transformation activity, and probably is a new retrovirus. Meanwhile, the work on the clone and sequence analysis of this virus are being carried out.