Radiobiological studies on cultured mouse bone marrow cells in vitro

Bone marrow cells obtained from both femora of 30-day-old NC-mice were cultured stationarily for varying days in vitro to study the pattern of growth and differentiation of the hemopoietic cells. Within 10 days of culture, erythroid cells, myeloid cells and lymphocyte-like cells disappeared from the culture, while the number of large mononuclear cells increased gradually with cultivation time and constituted about 98% of total cell population at 10 days of culture. On the other hand, these cultured bone marrow cells showed neither protective ability to lethally irradiated mice nor colony forming ability in the spleen of recipient mice, when injected into 700 R-irradiated NC-mice.