As an attempt to study the effect of the beige (bg) mutation on chemical carcinogenesis, 65 C57Bl/bg/bg mice and 83 +/bg littermate controls received DMBA in five weekly intragastric doses. The incidence of tumors of different histological types was monitored through observation periods ranging between 165 and 500 days. By 165 days after the first DMBA feeding, 18% of the +/bg and 31% of the bg/bg mice had developed tumors. The beige mice had a higher incidence of epithelial and non-epithelial tumors arising in cutaneous or subcutaneous sites than the controls. The total incidence of lymphomas was similar in the two groups. However, lymphomas appeared somewhat earlier in beige than in control mice. Altogether 33 +/bg and 27 bg/bg mice were followed for 500 days. By this time, 73% of the +/bg and 78% of the bg/bg mice had developed tumors. The beige group showed a higher incidence of non-thymic lymphomas than the controls. In contrast, the incidence of thymic lymphoma, cutaneous epithelial tumors and bile-duct adenomas was similar in the two groups or higher in +/bg that in bg/bg mice. The results suggest that the bg mutation causes a certain defect in a mechanism that may prevent or delay the onset of non-thymic lymphomas and of epithelial and non-epithelial cutaneous tumors in DMBA-treated mice. The differences between the two groups were smaller than those previously reported in relation to the increased susceptibility of beige mice to certain transplanted tumors, attributed to the known defect in natural killer (NK) activity in the beige mice. The reduced differential in the DMBA system may be due to the partial reduction of NK activity, induced by the carcinogen, as reported previously (Ehrlich et al., 1980) and confirmed in the present study.

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It has been shown previously that the retroviral envelope protein p15E suppresses certain monocyte and lymphocyte functions. In this paper, we describe the effects on natural killer (NK) activity of a synthetic peptide (CKS-17) with homology to a region of p15E conserved among numerous retroviruses. Enriched human NK cells were assayed against K562 tumor target cells in a 51Cr-release cytotoxicity assay. Pretreatment of NK cells with CKS-17 at concentrations as low as 1.5 microM, but not with equivalent concentrations of control materials, markedly and reproducibly suppressed NK lytic activity. Prior exposure of NK cells to interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) at 1000 U/ml did not alter their sensitivity to CKS-17-induced inhibition. Pretreating NK cells with CKS-17 almost entirely diminished their responsiveness to IFN-alpha and IFN-gamma, but not to interleukin 2 (IL 2). Kinetics experiments demonstrated that CKS-17-mediated suppression of both endogenous and activated NK cells was reversible after 18 hr at 37 degrees C. Experiments designed to examine the CKS-17 mechanism of action revealed that the peptide bound to all Leu-11+ lymphocytes, as shown by two-color flow cytometry. CKS-17 did not, however, inhibit effector cell/target cell conjugate formation. These data suggest a new mechanism for immune suppression mediated by retroviruses; inhibition of NK function. They moreover imply that the CKS-17 peptide interferes with the lytic phase of NK cytolysis.