Establishment and characterization of a granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor-dependent human myeloid cell...

A new human myeloid cell line has been established recently from the bone marrow cells of a patient with chronic myelogenous leukemia in blast crisis. The active proliferation and survival of the cells in RPMI 1640 medium containing fetal calf serum are clearly dependent on the presence of either natural or recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rhGM-CSF). Despite permanent culturing in rhGM-CSF (100 U/mL), the cells do not differentiate and bear the myelomonocytic surface markers CD34, CD13, CD36, as well as HLA-DR, but not CD3, CD7, CD10, CD11b, CD14, CD20, or CD42b. The predominant karyotype, apart from tetraploidy in several cells, is 45, XX, -9, -17, -19, -22, 7p-, 9q+ (der t[9;22]), der (13q), with three additional marker chromosomes, from which one was observed in the patient's leukemic cells. On BglII-digested DNA, Southern blot analysis with bcr 5' as the probe detected two additional hybridizing restriction fragments of 8.6 and 11.0 kilobase pairs.