Pure erythropoietic colony and burst formations in serum-free culture and their enhancement by insulin-like growth factor I.

Recombinant human insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) increased human and murine erythropoietic colony formation in serum-free culture. In order to investigate the effects of purified factors such as IGF-I on hemopoietic progenitor cells, we have established a serum-free culture system which supports the clonal growth of CFU-E- and BFU-E-derived colonies. Exogenously supplied ingredients were bovine serum albumin (BSA), transferrin, lipid suspensions, 2-mercaptoethanol, and recombinant human erythropoietin (epo). Among these, BSA and cholesterol were found to be essential ingredients. The optimum concentration of BSA sufficient to grow BFU-E was 3%. Erythroid colony and burst formation of human and murine marrow cells was enhanced twofold (p less than 0.05) by a physiological concentration of recombinant human IGF-I. Potentiation was observed in a dose-dependent manner between 10(-9) and 10(-7) M. A few murine CFU-E colonies were formed in the absence of epo. These results suggest that IGF-I has a supportive effect on the proliferation and differentiation of erythroid precursor cells stimulated by epo and that its action is synergistic with that of epo.