Persistence of murine myeloid leukaemic cells in long-term bone marrow cultures

Patterns of growth in long-term bone marrow culture were compared for a number of murine myeloid leukaemias. A leukaemic pattern of haematopoiesis was maintained in culture for a period of at least 15 weeks for one of the lines. However in the other five murine myeloid leukaemic lines studies, the leukaemic cells appeared not to survive in culture and normal haematopoiesis was established. Transplantation of cells from these established cultures at weeks 7 or 11 into syngeneic recipients revealed that leukaemic cells were present. Thus leukaemic cells seem to persist in long-term bone marrow cultures even in morphologically normal cultures.