K562 cells

K562 cells were the first human immortalised myelogenous leukaemia line to be established and are a bcr:abl positive erythroleukamia line derived from a 53 year old female CML patient in blast crisis (Lozzio & Lozzio, 1975; Drexler, 2000). The cells are non-adherent and rounded, and bear some proteomic resemblance to both undifferentiated granulocytes (Klein et al., 1976) and erythrocytes (Andersson et al., 1979). In culture they exhibit much less clumping than many other suspension lines, presumably due to the downregulation of surface adhesion molecules by bcr:abl (Fadel et al., 1999). K562s can spontaneously develop characteristics similar to early-stage erythrocytes, granulocytes and monocytes (Lozzio et al., 1981) and are easily killed by natural killer cells (Lozzio & Lozzio, 1979) as they lack the MHC complex required to inhibit NK activity (Drexler, 2000). They also lack any trace of Eppstein-Barr and Herpes-like viruses. In addition to the Philadelphia chromosome they also exhibit a second reciprocal translocation between the long arm of chromosome 15 with chromosome 17 (Lozzio & Lozzio, 1975).

Two sub-lines are available which express MHC class-I A2 (Britten et al., 2002) and A3 (Clark et al., 2001)

Footnotes and references
Andersson, L.C., Nilsson, K. & Gahmberg, C.G. (1979) “K562 - A human erythroleukemic cell line.” International Journal of Cancer. 23(2):143 - 147

Britten, C.M., Meyer, R.G., Kreer, T., Drexler, I., Wölfel, T. & Herr, W. (2002) “The use of HLA-A*0201-transfected K562 as standard antigen-presenting cells for CD8(+) T lymphocytes in IFN-gamma ELISPOT assays.” Journal of Immunological Methods. 259(1-2): 95-110.

Clark, R.E., Dodi, I.A., Hill, S.C., Lill, J.R., Aubert, G., Macintyre, A.R., Rojas, J., Bourdon, A., Bonner, P.L., Wang, L., Christmas, S.E., Travers, P.J., Creaser, C.S., Rees, R.C. & Madrigal, J.A. (2001) “Direct evidence that leukemic cells present HLA-associated immunogenic peptides derived from the BCR-ABL b3a2 fusion protein.” Blood. 98(10): 2887-2893.

Drexler, H.G. (2000) The Leukemia-Lymphoma Cell Line Factsbook. San Diego: Academic Press

Klein, E., Ben-Bassat, H., Neumann, H., Ralph, P., Zeuthen, J., Polliack, A., Vánky, F. (1976) “Properties of the K562 cell line, derived from a patient with chronic myeloid leukemia.” International Journal of Cancer. 18(4):421-431.

Lozzio, B.B. & Lozzio, C.B. (1979) “Properties and usefulness of the original K-562 human myelogenous leukemia cell line.” Leukemia Research. 3(6): 363-370.

Lozzio, B.B., Lozzio, C.B., Bamberger, E.G. & Feliu, A.S. (1981) “A multipotential leukemia cell line (K-562) of human origin.” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. 166: 546-550.

Lozzio, C.B. & Lozzio, B.B. (1975) “Human chronic myelogenous leukemia cell-line with positive Philadelphia chromosome..” Blood. 45(3): 321-334.