Maintenance of granulocyte-monocyte progenitor cells in liquid cultures of human foetal liver.

These studies describe a liquid suspension culture system for normal myeloid cells derived from human foetal liver. A simple one-step fractionation procedure was employed to obtain a cell population capable of expanding into all stages of myeloid differentiation, including committed myeloid progenitor cells (GM-CFC). Cell proliferation in these cultures resulted in the maintenance of early myeloid populations for up to a month. In order to extend myeloid cell maintenance, a specific factor in the form of media conditioned by human endothelial cells (endo C.M.) was used. Addition of endo C.M. to foetal liver cultures resulted in increased myeloid proliferation coupled to extensive myeloid differentiation. Clonally derived foetal liver culture cells proliferated for up to 2 months in the presence of endo C.M. before maturing into macrophages. These results show that endo C.M. exert an extensive proliferative effect on early myeloid cells as well as inducing their differentiation. The large quantity of cells in early stages of myeloid differentiation provided by foetal liver cultures may be useful for biochemical and molecular biology studies of myelopoiesis. In addition, these cultures are a potential source from which to derive normal myeloid lines. The separation of the potent proliferative activity present in endo C.M. may yield an effector which maintains human myeloid cell proliferation.