The isolation of inflammatory cells from normal human lung tissue.

An isolation procedure to obtain inflammatory cells from normal human lung tissue is described, consisting of four steps: an enzymatic digestion, centrifugal elutriation, gradient centrifugation and additional affinity chromatography (to obtain mast cells). The dispersed cell population consisted mainly of macrophages, pneumocytes type II, neutrophils and lymphocytes. Further separation by elutriation yielded pure macrophages and pure lymphocytes. The heterogeneous cell mixtures obtained at elutriation were separated by gradient centrifugation. This method yielded pure macrophages, lymphocytes and pneumocytes, and fractions containing eosinophils, mast cells or neutrophils were enriched considerably. Additional affinity chromatography with anti-human-IgE yielded a mast-cell fraction of 75%.