title: A rapid method for obtaining murine bone marrow cells in high yield.
abstract: A rapid and efficient method for obtaining murine bone marrow cells is described, which yields up to twice the amount of cells obtained by the conventional method of flushing through the bones. The femoral and tibial bones are partially broken by an Omni-Mixer in the presence of phosphate-buffered saline to allow their bone marrow content to extrude into the liquid suspension. Murine bone marrow cells obtained by this method were found to be more than 95% viable, and their differential counts were comparable to those of bone marrow suspensions obtained by the flushing method. Moreover, no contamination by cells from the bone or other surrounding tissues has been observed. Transplantation of bone marrow, obtained by the new extrusion method and depleted of T cells, resulted in long-term stable chimeras in which the hematopoietic reconstitution was comparable to that found in mice transplanted with bone marrow obtained by the flushing method. This new method for obtaining murine bone marrow cells may serve as a time- and mice-sparing alternative to the conventional flushing method, and may also prove useful in other animal models.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Levite
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Meshorer
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Reisner
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D002469:Cell Separation / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D008806:Mice, Inbred AKR; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D008809:Mice, Inbred C3H; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL