Interleukin 4 (B-cell stimulatory factor 1) can enhance or antagonize the factor-dependent growth of hemopoietic progenitor cells.

Our studies show that although interleukin 4 (IL-4) fails to stimulate significant colony formation by bone marrow progenitor cells, it enhances erythroid, granulocyte, macrophage, and mast-cell colony formation when used as a costimulant with erythropoietin, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, macrophage colony-stimulating factor, and interleukin 3 (IL-3), respectively. In contrast, IL-4 suppresses IL-3-dependent colony formation by granulocyte and macrophage progenitor cells and by multipotential progenitor cells. Furthermore, it appears to inhibit the in vitro generation of colony-forming progenitor cells from immature IL-3-dependent stem cells. We also found that IL-4 inhibits stromal cell-dependent growth of bone marrow-derived pre-B cells. The ability of IL-4 to directly or indirectly regulate both positive and negative aspects of progenitor cell growth is discussed.