Establishment of an IL-2-dependent, antigen nonspecific chicken T-cell line.

In this article, we describe a-chicken T helper-activated cell line, III-C5, which is non-antigen-specific but IL-2-dependent. By virtue of its absolute requirement for IL-2, the III-C5 cell line is a useful tool for quantifying IL-2 production by any chicken-activated T lymphocytes in culture. The III-C5 line will be used to quantify IL-2 production in mixed lymphocyte reaction in vitro, in order to study the functional activity of T lymphocytes from avian chimeras constructed in our laboratory and particularly for studying their state of tolerance.