Comparison of in vitro drug-sensitivity of human granulocyte-macrophage progenitors from two different origins: Umbilical cord blood and bone marrow

Predictive in vitro hematotoxicity assays using human cells will provide es timation of tolerable level and aid considerably the development of agents with greater therapeutic activity and less toxicity. Human hematopoietic ce lls can be derived from three sources: human bone marrow by sternal or femo ral aspiration, mobilized peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood samples collected from placentas after deliveries. Because of the difficulties to have a continuous supply of bone marrow cells from normal human donors and the related ethical problems, we performed a study to compare the sensitivi ty of human bone marrow cells (h-BMC) and human cord blood cells (h-CBC) to chemicals in order to confirm if h-CBC can readily replace bone marrow cel ls in checking the sensitivity of GM-CFU progenitors to drugs as preliminar ly reported in literature, Our results showed that the prediction of IC50 v alues in human model is quite similar by using h-BMC or h-CBC, On the contr ary, the type of medium influenced in a significant way the ICs determinati on of some drugs. (C) 1999 International Society for Experimental Hematolog y, Published by Elsevier Science Inc.