Effects of GM‐CSF deprivation on precursors of granulocytes and macrophages

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Abstract
Culture of C57BL bone marrow cells in the absence of GM‐CSF led to a loss of recoverable granulocyte‐macrophage colony‐forming cells of 2% per hour. The rate of loss of progenitor cells in cultures of CBA fetal liver cells was 5–6% per hour. Surviving colony‐forming cells exhibited a normal responsiveness to GM‐CSF but generated smaller colonies than normal when subsequently stimulated by GM‐CSF. Transfer of washed individual day‐3 granulocyte‐macrophage colony cells to cultures lacking GM‐CSF indicated that most cells were unable to survive or proliferate in the absence of GM‐CSF. Death of transferred cells was rapid and invariable when the cells were from macrophage‐forming colonies. However some cells from 40–70% of granulocyte‐forming colonies were able to undergo one or two divisions in the absence of GM‐CSF. This phenomenon was seen most often with cells from colonies where matching colony cells exhibited a higher‐than‐average proliferative capacity in parallel stimulated cultures. The results indicate the difficulty that will be encoutered in obtaining valid metabolic dta from unstimulated populations of granulocyte‐macrophage precursor cells. The ability of some granulocyte precursor cells to exhibit limited proliferation following GM‐CSF deprivation suggests that significant amounts of GM‐CSF may be bound to or be internalized in some precursor cells and result in cell division in the absence of GM‐CSF from culture medium.

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