International Journal of Cell Cloning, Vol 6, 313-323, Copyright © 1988 by AlphaMed Press
Improvement of human myeloma stem cell growth in a liquid culture system supplemented with phytohemagglutinin
G Visani, RM Lemoli, A Dinota, M Cavo, M Gobbi and S Tura
Institute of Hematology L. & A. Seragnoli, University of Bologna, Italy.
A highly efficient cloning system for in vitro myeloma colony growth could
be valuable for screening antineoplastic agents in resistant patients and
for testing the effects of purging methods in the context of autologous
bone marrow transplantation. In this paper we report the results of
experiments intended to improve the myeloma cloning system in plasma clot
originally described by Ludwig et al. We tested the effects of the addition
of phytohemagglutinin (PHA), coupled with a transformation of the original
plasma clot method into a liquid culture system. A statistically higher
number of myeloma colonies was observed in the liquid system in the
presence of PHA (20 cases, median 84.5 vs. 9.5; p = 0.005), whereas a
single variant (either PHA alone or liquid system alone) did not determine
any significant growth variation. The increase in the cloning efficiency
was evident even in the cases characterized by low bone marrow plasma cell
infiltration, suggesting that this method is suitable for the described
purposes.
