Differential effects of prepubertal rat Sertoli cell secreted proteins on somatic testicular and nontesticular cells.
There is little information on the mitogenic and immunoregulatory activities of proteins, secreted by prepubertal Sertoli cells during the stage of meiosis initiation and before creation of the blood-testis barrier. We have previously demonstrated dose-dependent and age-related stimulation of BALB/c 3T3 fibroblasts and quiescent rat prespermatogonia (Kancheva et al., 1990) as well as inhibition of natural killer cell activity of mice, guinea pigs and human lymphocytes (Nikolova et al., 1992) by Sertoli cell-conditioned medium derived from 12-day-old rats. In the current study, using splenic lymphocytes stimulated by PHA, LPS and Con A, we have shown a dose-dependent inhibition of T and B lymphocyte proliferation by prepubertal Sertoli cell-secreted proteins (pSCSP). These results suggest that by the time the blood-testis barrier had been formed, Sertoli cell in rat testis had already synthesized immunoregulatory proteins. In addition we have found that pSCSP stimulate the proliferation of TM3 Leydig but not TM4 Sertoli cells. The differential effect of pSCSP is an expression of the different balance between growth factors secreted by Sertoli cells, which in turn is dependent on the requirements of the cell types at each stage of testicular development.