Characteristics of human optic gliomas in tissue culture.

Nine human optic gliomas were examined in tissue culture. Typically, growth from the explants revealed well differentiated bipolar cells with abundant 9 to 10 nm fibers similar to those observed in the surgical specimens. Multinucleation was rare except for one culture, which had as many as 20 nuclei arranged in a palisading fashion along the periphery of some of the cells. Degenerative changes of the 9 to 10 nm fiber bundles with the production of amorphous electron-dense deposits were observed both in vivo and in vitro, and were thought to represent the formation of Rosenthal fibers. A distinctive feature of some of the optic gliomas was the ability of their long, thin cellular process to form fibrous tangles in tissue culture. The correlation of these fibrous tangles in culture with Rosenthal fibers in vivo is still uncertain.