Evaluation of the rat thyroid cell strain FRTL-5 as an in-vitro bioassay system for thyrotrophin

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Abstract
The cyclic AMP response to bovine TSH was characterized in a strain of rat thyroid follicular cells (FRTL-5) maintained in continuous culture. Significant stimulation of intracellular cyclic AMP was attained at a TSH dose of 5 μu./ml. Cyclic AMP accumulation continued to increase, at higher TSH doses, with no evidence for attainment of a maximum level at the highest dose tested (5 mu./ml). The precision of TSH measurement was better than 10% over the range 50–5000 μu./ml, comparing favourably with that observed with analogous assays based on human cells, tissue slices or membrane preparations. Using sequential subcultures of FRTL-5 cells, the between-assay variation in response to a single dose of a standard preparation of bovine TSH (53/11; 370 μu./ml) was of the order of 20% which compared favourably with the between-assay variation observed with different cultures of human thyroid cells. Prolongation of the incubation of FRTL-5 cells with TSH to 3 h revealed a progressive increase in the extracellular accumulation of cyclic AMP. Addition of TSH to resting FRTL-5 cells resulted in a stimulation of inorganic iodide uptake with pronounced bell-shaped dose–response characteristics. Thus a maximum uptake was observed at a TSH dose of 100 μu./ml with a significant reduction at higher doses. Acute stimulation of cells with TSH (100 μu./ml) resulted in a rapid and marked alteration in cell morphology, with evidence of cellular retraction and surface ruffling. J. Endocr. (1984) 101, 269–276