We determined whether the intravenous administration of multilamellar vesicle liposomes (MLV) containing a lipopeptide analogue of a fragment from the cell wall of gram-negative bacteria (CGP 31362) can render BALB/c mouse alveolar macrophages tumoricidal in situ and reduce the incidence of spontaneous lung metastasis of syngeneic renal carcinoma (RENCA) cells. Alveolar macrophages (a) incubated in vitro with MLV containing CGP 31362 (MLV-31362) and (b) harvested from mice injected i.v. with MLV-31362 were rendered cytotoxic against the RENCA cells. Maximum cytotoxic activity of the macrophages was induced by injecting 5 mumol MLV consisting of 250 mg phospholipids and 0.5 mg CGP 31362. The single i.v. injection of 5 mumol MLV-31362 produced activation of macrophages that lasted for up to 4 days. Repeated i.v. injections of MLV-31362 produced a continuous antitumor activity in alveolar macrophages. To study the lipopeptide's effects on metastasis, we injected the left kidneys of BALB/c mice with RENCA cells. The kidney with growing tumor was resected 10 days later and, after a further 2 days, groups of mice were injected i.v. with MLV-31362 or with MLV-HBSS (twice weekly for 3 weeks). Treatment with MLV-31362 significantly decreased the median number of spontaneous lung metastases. These data demonstrate that the systemic administration of MLV-31362 can activate murine lung macrophages in situ and reduce the incidence of spontaneous RENCA lung metastases.