Morphological Characterisation of Adult Acute Leukaemia in Short-Term Liquid Culture

Abstract

Culture of mouse (4) and human bone-marrow stem cells (8) was first reported using an agar co-culture system with a feeder layer as an exogenous source colony stimulating factor (CSF). Normal mouse marrow cells have an absolute and human marrow cells a relative dependency on CSF for growth in culture. Studies in experimental murine myeloid leukaemia established that the leukaemia cell has been able to grow in agar culture without a source of CSF, but that addition of CSF increased the number and size of colonies formed (6). In human acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) early reports failed to show colony formation in the majority of patients at the time of diagnosis, though some evidence of growth in the presence of a source of CSF was suggested by the formation of clusters and the comparison with the numbers of cells surviving for 8 days in cultures without CSF (7). Recently, using a simplified liquid culture technique, it has been possible to show that leukaemia cells from the majority of patients with acute myelogenous leukaemia are capable of growth in microculture in the absence of an extraneous source of CSF as measured by thymidine incorporation (2) (and the few cases where it was studied) actual increase in cell numbers in culture (1). In this article we report on the morphological features of the cells grown in liquid culture.