Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation - Blog Science Connections

Using a Liquid Cell Culture Assay to Measure
In Vitro Elimination of Burkitt's Cells From
Bone Marrow
/. Philip, M. C. Favrot, V. Combaret, J. G Laurent, B. Kremens,
and T. Philip
We have developed a liquid cell culture assay that enables the growth of
Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) cells, whose culture is either Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)
positive or negative, from cytologically normal bone marrow. As previously
reported, we currently use such an assay in our patients' follow-up to detect
minimal bone marrow involvement (1). This assay has permitted us to show
that 40% of patients in partial remission or in relapse have bone marrow
involvement, even if their bone marrow is cytologically normal (2).
We describe here how we have modified this assay to refine and quantify
the purging procedure. In artificial models when irradiated allogeneic bone
marrow is contaminated with BL cell lines, this liquid culture assay enables the
growth of as few as one BL cell in 4 x 10 6
normal bone marrow cells in a wide
range of BL cell lines. This culture assay also is useful in newly established
EBV-negative or EBV-positive lines from our Caucasian patients who are
candidates for autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) (3). More
recently, the assay has been used to quantify the elimination of fresh Burkitt's
cells from our patients' autologous bone marrow and to evaluate the quality of
therapeutic purging procedures, either in a preclinical assay or in the clinical
procedure itself, and we will specially emphasize this last point here.
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