Summary
A promyelocytic leukemia cell line, PL-21, was found to produce an inhibitor of plasminogen
activators (PAI). The PAI reacted to anti-PAl-2 but not anti-PAI-1 anti-serum and
had an apparent molecular weight of 43 kDa on unreduced SDS-PAGE. The PAI inhibited
not only urokinase-type plasminogen activator (u-PA) but single- and two-chain tissue-type
plasminogen activators (t-PAs) on plasminogen-containing fibrin plate. It formed SDS-stable
complexes with both t-PA and u-PA but not with prourokinase as demonstrated by both
fibrin zymography and immunoblotting using anti-PA and anti-PAI-2 antisera after SDS-PAGE.
These complexes were still present even after reduction with dithiothreitol. The PAI
appears to bind to the carboxy-terminal chain of both PAs, because the part of the
band corresponding to the carboxy-terminal chain of PAs moved to an upper position
as a result of complex formation when two-chain form of PAs were incubated with the
PAI and analyzed by SDS-PAGE followed by immunoblotting