Serum-free conditioned medium (CM) generated by human umbilical vein endothelial cell monolayers following pretreatment with 100 ng/ml of phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) promoted human polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMNL) migration as assayed in blindwell chambers. Stimulation of PMNL migration in response to CM was dependent on the dose of PMA used to pretreat the endothelial cells as well as the duration of incubation time to generate CM. Phorbol esters have been previously shown to release plasminogen activators from vascular endothelial cells. In the present study, pretreatment of endothelial cells with PMA also increased plasminogen activator activity in CM at a time course similar to the generation of PMNL chemoattractant activity. Treatment of CM with a polyclonal antibody against human urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) not only inhibited uPA activity, but also significantly reduced PMNL chemoattractant activity when compared with untreated CM. In contrast, treatment of CM with an antibody directed against tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) did not affect PMNL migratory activity. Furthermore, when CM was passed over an anti-uPA immunoaffinity column, plasminogen activator activity was reduced 90% and chemoattractant activities was reduced 68%. Both plasminogen activator and chemoattractant activities were reconstituted in the eluate from the anti-uPA column. These data demonstrate that uPA present in the CM from PMA-pretreated endothelial cells stimulates PMNL chemoattractant activity and suggests a possible role for endothelial cell-derived uPA in stimulating migration of peripheral blood leukocytes at an inflammatory locus.