The ability to measure cell proliferation is important in the study of cancer biology. The usual technique for quantitating proliferating cells in tissue explant and organ culture by detection of [3HJ-thymidine incorporation into DNA by autoradiography is tedious and time-consuming. We have developed a technique for identification and quantitation of bromodeoxyuridine (an analogue of thymidine) in cultured tissue explants. Fetal mouse colon explants were exposed in vitro to bromodeoxyuridine (BUdR) or thymidine for 3 to 72 hr and then for various periods to unlabeled thymidine. The tissues were stained with a monoclonal anti-bromodeoxyuridine antibody and in parallel

An in vitro system has been developed to elucidate the nature of the cellular defect in primary immunodeficiency diseases. Incubation, on human thymic epithelial monolayer cultures, of peripheral blood lymphocytes and bone-marrow cells from a child with documented severe combined immunodeficiency disease resulted in the appearance of a population of cells that formed rosettes with sheep erythrocytes. The same cell preparation permitted the synthesis of antigen-specific, complement-dependent antibodies after in vitro education, as demonstrated in a plaque assay system. In addition, thymic tissue from the same child gave morphologic and functional evidence of maturation when cultured in vitro. The experimental results suggest that in this case, lymphoid precursor cells were present in the bone marrow but failed to differentiate to functional maturity due to a defect in maturation of thymic tissue.

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Chimeric thymus, formed by fusing the prelymphoid third pharyngeal pouches of fetal mice with fetal liver, have been allowed to develop entirely in vitro. Syngeneic and allogeneic chimeras were prepared and both types of thymus were shown to contain substantial numbers of functional cytotoxic T lymphocyte precursors reactive against "third party" alloantigens. However, alloreactivity specific for H-2 antigens present on either the third pharyngeal pouch or the fetal liver was minimal. In three different allogeneic chimeric thymuses, the frequencies of cytotoxic T lymphocyte precursors reactive to H-2 antigens present on the third pharyngeal pouches were reduced to 1%, 4%, and 0% of control values, whereas, in the one allogeneic chimera tested for alloreactivity to H-2 antigens present on the fetal liver, the cytotoxic T lymphocyte precursor frequency was reduced to less than 1% of control values. The phenotype of the H-2 tolerance is shown to be one of functional clonal deletion of the cytotoxic T lymphocyte precursor.

The migration of murine fetal liver cells to thymus rudiments was studied in vitro using a migration under agar technique. There appeared to be a minor population that migrated specifically to the thymus from the age of 10 to 14 days of gestation. The specificity of migration was demonstrated in 12-day fetal liver cells by a series of competition studies. The ability of these cells to colonize a thymus rudiment was shown by further incubation after invasion of the epithelial thymus rudiments: small colonies of lymphoid cells were present in invaded tissue but absent from uninvaded control tissue. At 13 to 14 days of gestation, there appeared an additional population that migrated specifically to the spleen, as demonstrated, again, with a competition protocol. Studies with avian and human tissue as attractants in the same system showed that migration was specific to the thymus and did cross species barriers. This observation was used to demonstrate a similar attractant activity in cell-free conditioned medium from human thymus epithelial cultures, and to demonstrate the absence of such a cell-attractant factor in the conditioned medium from the thymus of a child with previously documented severe combined immunodeficiency disease.