The cultivation of mouse bone marrow in vivo.

LTHOUGH BONE s1ARRO\V CELLS have been cultivated by traditional tissue culture technics,1 tiley tend to lose their morphologic identity and to cease differentiating in cultures maintained for long periods of time. The morphologic changes which cultures of blood and bone marrow cells undergo when cultivated on glass substrates have i)een reviewed by Bloom1 and most recently described for human bone marrow by L. Berman4 and Woodliff.5 Another approachi to the cultivation of iiiammahian tissues has been the system dievisedi by Algire and his co-workers, which combines both in vitro and in vivo condiitions. The methoti described by Algire et al.9 entails tile placement of the tissue iiuto a diffusion cilamber whichl is tilen implanted into the peritoneal cavity of a host animal. Several mammalian tissues and various cellular types have been showll to maintain both their growth and functional characteristics when cultivated in tiiis fashuion.’’’2 To our knowledge, however, no reports have yet a )peared indicating tile feasibility of using tile diffusion chamber technic for tile cultivation of hemopoietic cells. It was for this reason that tile present study using dliffusicn chambers was undertaken. Since no attempt was made to quantitate tile growthi of cells in these experiments, the material presented! in this p tper is concerned! mainly vithl the technics used for the cultivation of normal mouse bone marrow ill diffusion chambers, and with the morphologic appearance of the marrow cells at serial intervals after implantation. The quantitation of cellular growth witilin the diffusion chamber and the ability of mouse bone marrow to function as bone marrow after cultivation in vivo will be the subject of a future report.