Natural cell‐mediated cytotoxicity against syngeneic rat chondrocytes originating from different types of cartilage

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Abstract
Natural anti-chondrocyte cytotoxicity of normal rat splenocytes, peritoneal cells and thymocytes was tested by means of 51Cr-release assay. Chondrocytes derived from epiphyseal, costal, nasal, and auricular cartilages were used as target cells. In some experiments, erythroleukaemic K-562 cells, known as typical natural killer cell targets, were also used. All types of chondrocytes were lysed equally well by splenocytes. Peritoneal cells exerted a low cytotoxic effect, whilst very low, almost negligible, cytotoxicity was noted with thymocytes. Negative selection with antibodies and complement showed that spleen-derived anti-chondrocyte effector cells are endowed with surface ganglioside asialo-GM1. A similar result was obtained in parallel experiments with K-562 cells. Moreover, 'cold' target experiments demonstrated that the release of 51Cr from the labeled chondrocytes could be inhibited by addition of unlabelled chondrocytes and K-562 cells.