Growth of in vitro colony-forming cells from normal human peripheral blood leukocytes cultured in diffusion chambers.

The growth of granulopoietic progenitor cells (CFU-C) in diffusion chambers during culture of peripheral blood leukocytes from 10 normal subjects has been studied. At various times after initiation of diffusion chamber culture, cells harvested from the chambers were transferred to agar culture for measurement of CFU-C concentration. Under these conditions colonies could be grown successfully in agar culture provided pronase, necessary for the chamber harvesting procedure, was first removed by careful washing. A marked increase in the number of CFU-C, up to 25-fold the initial value, was observed in 8 out of 10 subjects. Here the growth pattern was similar, independent of the initial CFU-C throughout the diffusion chamber culture period was very poor. The growth of CFU-C from a given individual's blood was shown to be reproducible in repeated studies in 2 subjects, one of whom showed a proliferative and the other a non-proliferative pattern. Evidence suggests that the increase in CFU-C in diffusion chambers is the result of both self-renewal of these cells and influx from a more primitive compartment, although the present data do not allow an estimate of the relative magnitude of each.