Pharmacologic and immunologic methods of ex-vivo bone marrow (BM) purging for acute nonlymphocytic leukemia (ANLL) were combined to augment the effect of either method alone. Etoposide (VP16; 20 to 30 micrograms/mL) with or without cytosine arabinoside (Ara C; 10 mg/mL) was used in tandem with the anti-CD33 monoclonal antibody (MoAb), MY9, chosen because CD33 is found on the stem cell pool in t...

On modern dairy farms, environmental mastitis pathogens are usually the predominant cause of mastitis, and bedding often serves as a point of exposure to these organisms. The objective of this longitudinal study was to determine bacterial populations of 4 different bedding types [deep-bedded new sand (NES), deep-bedded recycled sand (RS), deep-bedded manure solids (DBMS), and shallow-bedded man...

Quantitative lytA PCR is often performed using in-house standards. We hypothesised equivalence when measuring a standard suspension of Streptococcus pneumoniae by colony-forming-units (CFU) or genome-copies. Median (IQR) ratio of CFU/genome-copies was 0.19 (0.1-1.2). Genome-copies were less variable than CFU, but the discrepancy between the methods highlights challenges with absolute quantifica...

The erythroid colony-forming technique has been used to study the erythropoietin (Ep) sensitivity of CFU-E during ontogenesis. Evidence is provided which indicates that an agerelated decreasing Ep sensitivity of CFU-E occurs as the animal develops. In addition, an intermediate Ep-sensitive CFU-E population represented by the 2-day-old neonate is present during the transition from foetus to adul...

A steam-vacuum sanitizer reduced aerobic plate counts associated with bovine faecal contamination from 5.5 log10 cfu cm-2 to 3.0 +/- 0.21 log10 cfu cm-2 on beef carcass short plates. The same beef carcass short plates inoculated with 7.6 +/- 0.09 log10 cfu cm-2 Escherichia coli O157:H7 in faeces, yielded an average residual level of E. coli O157:H7 of 2.1 +/- 0.21 log10 cfu cm-2, after steam-va...

Two classes of human marrow megakaryocyte progenitor cells are described. Colony-forming unit-megakaryocyte (CFU-MK)-derived colonies appeared in vitro after 12-day incubation; burst-forming unit-megakaryocyte (BFU-MK)-derived colonies appeared after 21 days. CFU-MK-derived colonies were primarily unifocal and composed of 11.6 +/- 1.2 cells/colony; BFU-MK-derived colonies were composed of 2.3 +...

Expression of HLA-DR surface antigens by granulocyte/monocyte colony-forming cells (CFU-GM) may be important in the regulation of proliferation of these cells. Using immunological techniques to enrich for progenitor cells, we investigated the expression of HLA-DR in subsets of CFU-GM. "Early" (day 14) CFU-GM express higher levels of HLA-DR than do "late" (day 7) CFU-GM. Among late CFU-GM, cells...

BACKGROUND Percoll and Ficoll density gradient media are widely used in the isolation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) for research. However, the efficacy of the two methods in the isolation of hMSCs and their differentiation potentiality have not been evaluated. In this study, the ability of the two methods to isolate MSCs from human bone marrow was compared. METHODS Colony forming un...