Interleukin-7 (IL-7) is a potent stimulator of pre-B-lymphocyte proliferation. Pre-B cells transformed by a variety of oncogenes including those of the ABL protein tyrosine kinase family were screened for endogenous IL-7 mRNA expression by polymerase chain reaction and a sensitive bioassay for secreted IL-7. Some v-abl but none of the BCR/ABL, v-src, v-fms, v-myc, v-ras, or v-raf transformants analyzed contained elevated IL-7 transcripts. None of the cell lines secreted detectable bioactivity. We overexpressed IL-7 via a retroviral vector in an IL-7-dependent pre-B cell line to assess the potential for autocrine growth stimulation and malignant transformation. We achieved dramatic deregulation of IL-7 translational suppression by removing portions of the 5' flanking region. Levels of IL-7 expression much greater than those needed to establish factor-independent growth did not induce colony formation in agar by IL-7-expressing pre-B cell lines, and the majority of these lines were nontumorigenic in syngeneic mice. The same pre-B cell line transformed by v-abl displayed a highly malignant phenotype while containing dramatically lower IL-7 transcript levels. We conclude that endogenous IL-7 expression is not a necessary event in transformation of pre-B cells, nor is it sufficient to explain the malignant phenotype in v-abl-transformed cells. Up regulation of endogenous IL-7 expression in some transformed pre-B cells may be one of several synergistic events which can lead to malignant conversion.