Stem Cells, Vol 12, 533-538, Copyright © 1994 by AlphaMed Press
Comparative heat sensitivity of murine and human hemopoietic progenitors and clonogenic leukemia cells
J Gidali, I Feher and P Kovacs
National Institute of Haematology, Blood Transfusion and Immunology, Budapest, Hungary.
The aim of this study was to compare the thermal sensitivity of normal
murine and human hemopoietic progenitors to that of leukemic murine and
human clonogenic cells in order to assess the clinical relevance of
experimental data. Colony forming units-granulocyte-macrophage (CFU-GM)
from normal human bone marrow and from bone marrow of patients with acute
lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), and Hodgkin's
disease in complete remission proved to be less sensitive to 42.5 degrees C
in vitro hyperthermia (D0: 93.9 min) than murine bone marrow CFU-GM (D0:
49.6 min). Leukemic colony forming cells (CFU-L) from HL-60 suspension
culture--when compared to human CFU-GM--showed significantly increased
thermal sensitivity (D0: 22.8 min). While the thermal sensitivity of CFU-L
from a murine leukemia cell line (WEHI 3- B) was not statistically
significant when compared to that of CFU-L from HL-60 (D0 values 17.0
versus 22.8 min), the vertical difference between the parallel regression
lines suggested an approximately three- fold greater survival for human
CFU-L. Although carefully controlled hyperthermia is an easy purging
technique, the relevance of murine data to human clinical practice must be
considered critically.
