DM650, a soluble human IL-6Ralpha mutant with mutation of C277D/H280I, was previously shown to exhibit an antagonism to IL-6, which resulted in growth-inhibition of human multiple myeloma cell line AF-10 autocrining as the growth-stimulating factor. We investigated here the nature of the growth inhibition by examining cell apoptosis. Flow-cytometric analysis of the DNA fragmentation demonstrated that 7.2% of the AF-10 cells were apoptotic after 24 h of treatment with DM650. The constitutive gene expression of bcl-2 in AF-10 cells indicated that apoptosis suppressed by IL-6 was independent of bcl-2 regulation. The altered gene expression of c-myc and p53 suggested that a novel apoptosis pathway, other than that suppressed by IL-6, might be triggered by a complex of DM650 and IL-6.