Optimization of culture conditions for bone marrow stromal cells in RPMI-1640 medium.

UNLABELLED Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells are important for both research and clinical purpose. A number of culture methods for these cells are available on the market, many of them consisting of specialized growing media in combination with growth factors. Our goal was to optimize a less expensive culture method for bone marrow mesenchymal cells. MATERIAL AND METHODS Eight samples of bone marrow aspirates from patients were used. Out these 8 samples 2 were from healthy people, 3 from chronic granulocytic leukemia patients, 2 from multiple myeloma patients and 2 from patients with myelodysplastic syndrome. Bone aspirates from healthy people were used to optimize the culture method and the rest were used for testing the optimized method. Two methods were tried: 1. Cell culture starting from whole bone marrow, 2) cell culture after bone marrow separation in density gradient with Histopaque. RESULTS Cell culture starting from whole bone marrow gives better yields for mesenchymal stem cells than methods which include gradient density separation of mononuclear cells with Ficoll-Histopaque. CONCLUSIONS We have optimised a less expensive cell culture method for bone marrow mesenchymal cells.