text: LMP1 Promotes B Cell Survival and Proliferation In Vitro
  Primary B cell cultures can be maintained through CD40 ligation and supplementation with IL4 [32]. To investigate whether LMP1 affects primary B cell survival and proliferation, splenocytes were cultured in the presence or absence of IL4 and analyzed by MTS as a metabolic marker, by ethidium monoazide (EMA) exclusion for viability, and by 5-bromo-2'-deoxy-uridine (BrdU) incorporation for proliferation. In the MTS assay, as expected, splenocytes from wild-type mice did not survive even with the addition of IL4 due to a lack of CD40 ligation (Figure 3A). In contrast, LMP1 splenocytes had increased metabolism even in the absence of IL4, which was further enhanced upon addition of IL4. Wild-type and LMP1 transgenic lymphoma cells had high levels of MTS activity even in the absence of IL4 (Figure 3A). The LMP1 transgenic lymphoma cells had approximately 4-fold higher MTS activity than the normal transgenic lymphocytes and were at least 2-fold higher than the control lymphoma. As previously published, lymphoma usually develops in mice over 12 mo of age and all mice are sacrificed by 18-20 mo. The ages of the transgenic mice with or without lymphoma ranged between 6 and 20 mo old. There was no correlation between age and MTS activity. 
  EMA exclusion of CD19+ gated B cells prepared from two wild-type and two LMP1 transgenic mice indicated a 2-fold increase in viability in the LMP1 transgenic lymphocytes compared to wild-type lymphocytes. Two examples of LMP1 transgenic lymphoma cells had greatly increased viability that was not increased by IL4 treatment, indicating that the lymphoma cells are independent of IL4 co-stimulation (Figure 3B). Enhancement in MTS activity was observed in LMP1 transgenic lymphoma cells by the addition of IL4; however, EMA exclusion did not reveal a similar increase. This could reflect a difference for IL4 requirement in the metabolic activity versus the viability of LMP1 transgenic lymphoma cells. Although expression of LMP1 could enhance survival of non-malignant primary lymphocytes, BrdU incorporation revealed that LMP1 expression alone was not sufficient to induce proliferation in culture (unpublished data). Only lymphoma cells had detectable levels of BrdU incorporation detected by flow cytometry (Figure 3C). Interestingly, LMP1 lymphoma cells had significantly higher levels of proliferation in comparison to the spontaneous lymphoma that developed in an LMP1-negative littermate (25% versus 4%). This higher level of proliferation was observed in lymphomas that express both high (Table 1, LMP1-L2 and LMP1-L3) and low (Table 1, LMP1-L5) levels of LMP1, suggesting that even small amounts of LMP1 is sufficient to induce dramatic effects in proliferation. The level of proliferation was not enhanced upon IL4 addition, confirming the IL4 independence observed in the viability studies (Figure 3C; Table1). 
  