HL‐60 Cells Alternative Response to an Ionomycin PMA Cocktail

Abstract

The combination of Ionomycin and phorbol 12‐myristate 13‐acetate (PMA) cocktail has been used to increase the proliferation of normal mouse and human T cells and PMA alone has been used to cause the differentiation of the myeloid leukaemia HL‐60 cells in culture to a macrophage‐like adherent population. Contrariwise, the cocktail was linked to apoptosis in acute HL‐60 cells. This distinction has also been noted in the literature by Wang, et al. (2014), who concluded that Jurkat T cells were inhibited at S‐phase and G2/M‐phase by the cocktail. When we cultured the HL‐60 cells for 48 hours in the presence of the cocktail, we also saw no growth and significant death. Originally, we suspected this distinction was due to the biological differences between normal cells and tumor cells; however, further investigation revealed a discrepancy within the literature. While HL‐60, Jurkat, and Glioma cells (Han 2013) are inhibited by the cocktail, breast cancer cell lines were MDA‐MB‐435 and MDA‐MB‐231 had enhanced invasion (Yiu 2006). Future experiments including a cell cycle analysis and apoptosis assay will be used to test other cancerous and non‐cancerous cell lines in hopes of elucidating a pattern for the effects of the ionomycin PMA cocktail.Support or Funding InformationCarl Savino and Olga Gerych‐Savino Endowment, The Geneseo Foundation, and David Wolf, D.O.