Factors regulating macrophage production and growth: identity of colony-stimulating factor and macrophage growth factor.

The activities of a colony-stimulating factor (CSF), which stimulates granulocyte-macrophage colony formation by mouse hemopoietic cells, and macrophage growth factor (MGF), which stimulates proliferation of activated peritoneal macrophages, have been demonstrated by various criteria to reside in the same molecular species. These criteria include occurrence in various sources and copurification of the activities in mouse L-cell-conditioned medium as well as the biological, physicochemical, and antigenic properties of the activities of L-cell-conditioned medium. CSF and MGF activities of L-cell-conditioned medium are ascribable to a glycoprotein of mol wt approximately 60,000 which migrates electrophoretically with alpha-globulin. Human urinary CSF, which also possesses MGF activity, has similar properties and can be neutralized by antiserum to highly purified L-cell medium CSF. A procedure is described for the partial purification of material from L-cell medium that has activity at 1 ng/ml in both MGF and CSF assays.