A Multipotential Leukemia Cell Line (K-562) of Human Origin

Abstract

The K-562 leukemia cell line, originally established in our laboratory, has been Characterized as an early precursor of the granulocytic series with a block for differentiation. Since K-562 blasts did not differentiate when cultured for 7-8 days in liquid media or 14-16 days in agar-gel an attempt was made to stimulate their potential for spontaneous differentiation by prolonging the time in culture. Inducers of differentiation were not added to the cultures and the cells were studied when they reached the steady state rather than during exponential growth. The cultivation of K-562 cells for 10 to 1 1 days in media gradually depleted of the essential nutrients needed for cell division induced their differentiation into early precursors of the monocytic, granulocytic, and erythrocytic series. Thus, the peroxidase reaction for hemoglobin demonstrates benzidine-positive material limited to the region of the Golgi apparatus. Analysis of the hemoglobin by isoelectric focusing indicated major bands in the region of embryonic hemoglobin. Most cells (80-90s) give a strong reaction for a-naphthyl acetate esterase typical of monocytes and as many as 30 to 40% of the cells have abundant red cytoplasmic granules of naphthol AS-D chloroacetate esterase characteristic of granulocytic precursors. Myeloperoxidase activity was found in 5 to 10% of the cells. Polyploid cells (5 -8%) and early myelomonocytic precursors have PAS-positive material, were stained with Sudan black, and possessed abundant acid phosphatase. The data support the conclusion that K-562 is, indeed, a multipotential leukemia cell line of human origin.

Polycomb repressive complex 2 epigenomic signature defines age-associated hypermethylation and gene expression changes

“…17,52 Notably, the other cell lines showing frequent enrichments in age-associated regions resembled embryonic cell lines in their developmental properties. For example, the multipotent K562, a highly undifferentiated lymphoblastoid cell line, is able to develop into different blood cell progenitors, 53 resembling the developmental potential of haematopoietic stem cells. Furthermore, monoclonal antibodies against K562 cells also recognize human haematopoietic pluripotent stem cells.…”

Senescence as A Consequence of Ginsenoside Rg1Response on K562 Human Leukemia Cell Line

“…Based on this awkward situation, an alternative strategy of induction of cellular senescence has been widely considered, which is taken as a tumor suppressor that protects against cancer progression (Collado et al, 2007;Ewald et al, 2010). The K562 leukemia cell line, originally established from a patient with chronic myelogenous leukemia (Lozzio et al, 1975), has been characterized as an early precursor of the granulocytic series with a block for differentiation and widely used for in vitro studies of human leukemia (Lozzio , 1981;Park et al, 2000). Accumulating studies have provided convincing evidences that several tumor cells can be induced senescence with some traditional Chinese drugs or main ingredients (Lin et al, 2011;Tan et al, 2011).…”

Growth autonomy and lineage switching in BCR-ABL-transduced human cord blood cells depend on different functional domains of BCR-ABL

“…However, both were still consistently much higher than the levels of P210 seen in K562 cells -an established human leukemic cell line with multiple Ph chromosomes. 38 This presumably reflects a greater potency of the long terminal repeat promoter of the vector in transduced cells by comparison to the BCR promoter in CML cells. Prior blotting of the same cell lysates with an antiphosphotyrosine antibody showed the levels of most of the tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins in the P210DSH2-expressing CB cells to be reduced relative to the P210-transduced CB cells, but higher than in K562 cells.…”