Fibroblast growth factor 1 (FGF-1) is a potent angiogenic and neurotrophic factor whose structure lacks a classical signal sequence for secretion. Although the initiation of these biological activities involves the interaction between FGF-1 and cell surface receptors, the mechanism responsible for the regulation of FGF-1 secretion is unknown. We report that murine NIH 3T3 cells transfected with a synthetic gene encoding FGF-1 secrete FGF-1 into their conditioned medium in response to heat shock. The form of FGF-1 released by NIH 3T3 cells in response to increased temperature (42C, 2 hr) in vitro is not biologically active and does not associate with either heparin or the extracellular NIH 3T3 monolayer matrix. However, it was possible to derive biologically active FGF-1 from the conditioned medium of heat-shocked NIH 3T3 cell transfectants by ammonium sulfate fractionation. The form of FGF-1 exposed by ammonium sulfate fractionation is similar in size to cytosolic FGF-1 and can bind and be eluted from immobilized heparin similarly to the recombinant human FGF-1 polypeptide. Further, the release of FGF-1 by NIH 3T3 cell transfectants in response to heat shock is reduced signifi.-cantly by both actinomycin D and cycloheximide. These data indicate that increased temperature may upregulate the expression of a factor responsible for the secretion of FGF-1 as a biologically inactive complex that requires an activation step to exhibit the biological activity of the extracellular polypeptide mitogen.structures, and tightly regulated activation mechanism (reviewed in ref. 9). Indeed, members of the HSP70 family have many functions (9), including the ability to associate with polypeptides known to be directed to specific cellular organelles such as the nucleus (10), nucleolus (11), mitochondria (12,13,14), microsomes (15), endoplasmic reticulum (13) (22), and polyoma middle T antigen (23,24). While the expression and translocation of HSP70 between organelles is cell cycle-specific (25) and has been reported to be associated with physiologic vascular stress (26-28), the function of these stress proteins in diseases associated with fever, inflammation, cellular hypertrophy, or programmed cell death (29-32) remains unknown. Because (i) the expression of FGF-1 is exaggerated in inflamed cartilage in vivo (33), (ii) FGF-1 is a potent regulator of cellular hypertrophy (34), and (iii) programmed cell death has been proposed as a mechanism for the release ofcytosolic FGF-1 (1-3, 8), we examined the role of heat-induced stress as a potential mechanism for the secretion ofFGF-1 in vitro and report here that the release of cytosolic FGF-1 is regulated by temperature in vitro.The fibroblast growth factor (FGF) family of heparin-binding proteins is composed of two prototype members, FGF-1 (acidic) and FGF-2 (basic), and five related proteins (1). The FGF prototype structures are unique among the members of the FGF family because, unlike the majority of FGF-related polypeptides, the FGF prototypes lack a classical signal peptid...