Human granulopoiesis in vitro: an advantage in the use of Iscove's modified Dulbecco's medium.

With the aim of determining whether Iscove's Dulbecco's medium (IMDM) provides a growth advantage in the support of granulopoiesis from cultures of human bone marrow in agar, samples from 20 normal subjects were examined in triplicate after 7, 10 and 14 days in parallel cultures containing IMDM or Dulbecco's medium. From every sample, more granulocyte-macrophage colonies were obtained at each culture interval with IMDM. In particular, the number of colonies with IMDM at 14 days (96 +/- 13 per 2x10(5) bone marrow cells) was almost double that with Dulbecco's medium (50 +/- 10). This increment consisted almost entirely of pure granulocyte colonies (P less than 0.001). No significant change in the proportion of eosinophil colonies was observed. These data indicate that IMDM does provide a growth advantage over Dulbecco's medium in the generation of granulocyte (neutrophil and eosinophil) colonies from agar cultures of normal human bone marrow.