An in vitro clonal assay of adherent stem cells (ASC) in mouse marrow.

Hematopoietic stem cells with high proliferative capacity can be assayed when stromal bone marrow cultures are overlaid with limiting dilutions of marrow samples. This leads to hematopoietic growth after 4 weeks in a fraction of cultures, consistent with expectations based on Poisson statistics. It will be shown that monoclonal cultures are obtained that last from 2 to 15 weeks and that can generate up to several million mature granulocytes. The originating clone-forming cell is named adherent stem cell (ASC) because of its adherence to plastic or stromal surfaces. The ASC is comparable to the CFU-S in frequency, proliferative capacity and in its ability to give rise to CFU-S. As an unexpected additional finding we report that a mode of "clonal succession" was apparent in cultures which expressed more than one clone.