With organ allografts considerable numbers of donor-type mononuclear cells are transferred to the recipient, leading to bilateral immunological interactions between donor and recipient lymphocytes. To study such bilateral immune reactions in detail, human two-way MLC were performed. In this model proliferation kinetics, patterns of activation, and survival of the two populations were analysed, and the relevance of initial cell subset composition, relative cell numbers, and the effect of immunosuppression on this co-culture were evaluated. It could be demonstrated that with an initial 50:50 ratio of two populations of allogeneic cells one population dominated after 21 days of co-culture in 78 out of 80 combinations (97%) tested; the other population decreased markedly after an initially stable phase of 6-7 days. With unequal starting conditions the larger population dominated when resting cells were used, but small populations of preactivated cells or separated CD8+ cells could also dominate. Depletion of CD16+ natural killer (NK) cells and of CD2- cells (B cell and monocytes) had no effect on domination. Addition of cyclosporin delayed or blocked the domination process while addition of IL-2 accelerated it. Disappearance of one population was associated with detection of apoptotic cells. The findings indicate that co-cultures of allogeneic mononuclear cells are generally not stable for more than 1 week, but lead to active elimination of one population. CD8+ cells and particularly preactivated cells seem to play the most important role in that process, while NK cells are of less importance. Cyclosporin can prolong survival of allogeneic cells in co-culture. These observations suggest that under the conditions of clinical organ transplantation even small amounts of immunocompetent donor cells transferred by the graft may persist for some time and may, thereby, have the chance to exert immunomodulatory functions.