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* Department of Immunology, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037; and
Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Darlinghurst, New South Wales, Australia
IL-7, a member of the common 
-chain family of cytokines, is essential for B and T lymphocyte development and homeostasis of mature T cell subsets. Thus, naive and memory T cells are both dependent on IL-7 for survival and homeostatic proliferation under lymphopenic conditions. In line with prior findings with IL-2, we show in this study that the biological activity of IL-7 in vivo is greatly increased by association with anti-IL-7 mAb. Under in vivo conditions, IL-7/mAb complexes displayed 50- to 100-fold higher activity than free IL-7 and induced massive expansion of pre-B cells. IL-7/mAb complexes also increased thymopoiesis in normal mice and restored thymopoeisis in IL-7-deficient mice. For mature T cells, IL-7/mAb complexes induced marked homeostatic proliferation of both naive and memory CD4+ and CD8+ cell subsets even under normal T cell-replete conditions. Finally, IL-7/mAb complexes were able to enhance the magnitude of the primary response of Ag-specific naive CD8+ cells. The strong stimulatory activity of IL-7/mAb complexes could be useful for treatment of immunodeficiency and cancer.
The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
1 This work was supported by Grants CA038355, AI046710, AI045809, AG020186, and AG001743 from the U.S. Public Health Service. O.B. was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Novartis Foundation.
2 Current address: Division of Immunology and Allergy, University Hospital of Lausanne, CH-1011 Lausanne, Switzerland.
3 Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Charles D. Surh, Department of Immunology, IMM26, Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037. E-mail address: csurh{at}scripps.edu
4 Abbreviations used in this paper: c, common chain; Treg, regulatory T cell; LN, lymph node; rh, recombinant human; rm, recombinant murine; OVA-HSP, OVA conjugated to heat shock protein; LCMV, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus; BM, bone marrow; DP, double positive; MP, memory-phenotype.
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