C. Duvaljobe et al., MECHANISM BY WHICH U937 PROMONOCYTIC CELLS INACTIVATE HUMAN INTERFERON-GAMMA, Journal of interferon & cytokine research, 15(6), 1995, pp. 557-565
Mononuclear phagocytes produce proteinases that are thought to play a
role in regulating the activity of cytokines. Activated macrophages se
crete urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA), which mediates the f
ormation of the serine proteinase plasmin from the ubiquitous zymogen
plasminogen. We previously observed a correlation between in vitro pla
sminogen activation by the promonocytic cell line U937 and the apparen
t ability of these cells to inactivate recombinant interferon-gamma (r
IFN-gamma) by proteolysis. The present study was designed to test the
hypothesis that plasmin, generated in U937 cell cultures, is both nece
ssary and sufficient to inactivate rIFN-gamma by limited proteolysis.
The following observations are consistent with this hypothesis: (1) in
activation of rIFN-gamma was prevented by inhibitors of serine protein
ases or an antibody that specifically immunodepleted plasmin activity;
(2) purified plasmin inactivated rIFN-gamma as efficiently as U937 cu
lture supernatants and was similarly sensitive to serine proteinase in
hibitors; and (3) plasmin removed an 11 amino acid carboxyl-terminal p
eptide from rIFN-gamma, which included a region known to be required f
or bioactivity. Overall, these data indicate that plasminogen activati
on by U937 promonocytic cells leads to the proteolytic inactivation of
IFN-gamma by a process that only requires the production of plasmin.