A retroviral vector-mediated system was established to allow efficient transduction of the wild-type p53 gene into human lung cancer cell lines H358a (deleted p53) and H322a (mutant p53). LNSX/p53 constructs incorporating p53 cDNA driven by a beta-actin promoter mediated stable integration of p53. p53 mRNA and protein were detected in these cell lines 6 months after transduction by Northern and Western blot analyses. Restoration of the wild-type p53 gene suppressed growth in the two transduced cell lines but had no effect in another transduced tumor cell line, H460a, which has an endogenous wild-type p53 gene. A high transduction efficiency was obtained in cell lines H460a, H322a, and H358a after five cycles of transduction in vitro. Mixing experiments showed that transduced cells could reduce the growth rate of nontransduced cells; this reduction may have been mediated by factors shed into the supernatant of the transduced cell cultures.