International Journal of Cell Cloning, Vol 5, 289-301, Copyright © 1987 by AlphaMed Press
Thymus-derived stromal cell lines
M Tamir, LA Rozenszajn, Z Malik and D Zipori
We derived stromal cell lines from mouse thymus using methods previously
established for bone marrow stroma. Two main morphologically distinct
groups of cell strains emerged: epithelioid and mixed
fibroblast-macrophage. Transmission electron microscopy revealed frequent
junctional-complex formations between adjacent cells, a feature that
characterized almost all of the thymus stromal lines, but was confined to
only one of the five distinct subtypes of cell lines from bone marrow. In
contrast to marrow stromal cells, the thymus- derived cell lines were all
negative with fat-detecting reagents, had low acid phosphatase and no basic
phosphatase activities and were unable to support the in vitro
proliferation of myeloid progenitor cells (CFU-gm). Leukemia cell
inhibitory activity (LCIA) was detected in one of the thymus stromal cell
lines. The differences observed between cell lines derived from the stroma
of the thymus and those from bone marrow may relate to the functional
specificities of these organs.
