New experimental model of meningeal leukemia

Meningeal leukemia is a common, often fatal complication of leukemia. Efforts to devise better prophylactic or therapeutic regimens have been limited by large gaps in knowledge regarding the pathogenesis of the process. This report describes a new experimental model of meningeal leukemia that should facilitate its study and fill some of the gaps. T-cell lymphomas, originally induced in C3H mice by Gross murine leukemia virus, were established as transplantable tumor lines in syngeneic mice. Three of ten tumor lines produced meningeal leukemia when injected i.v. into normal recipient animals. The others produced predominantly visceral lymphomas.