A proliferative defect of human bone marrow after transplantation.

A technique which permits proliferation of CFU-C or their precursors is described. Bone marrow cells from 10 normal donors showed an increase over a 2 week culture period of total nucleated cell counts, and of granulocyte colony and cluster forming cells. During culture an adherent layer of fibroblasts and monocyte-macrophage cells formed. Bone marrow from eight patients taken between 2 weeks and 2 years after marrow transplantation did not show CFU-C proliferation or increase in total cell counts in culture. This difference did not appear to be due to changes in the adherent cell layer formation, and suggests that grafted human bone marrow shows a proliferative defect similar to that described in mouse transplantation models.