Acquisition of selected subpopulations of leukemic cells for study

Neoplastic cells are frequently intermingled with normal cells in vivo in man and in laboratory animals. In addition, tumor cells frequently consist of functionally distinct cell subpopulations. We have used both centrifugal elutriation and electronic cell sorting to separate leukemic cells from nonleukemic hematopoietic cells and to separate kinetically distinct subpopulations of leukemia cells. In addition, methods have been developed to use pulse cytophotometry to detect the interaction of the anthracyclines with leukemic cells during exposure, both in vitro and in vivo.