Acute myelogenous leukemia of the Wistar/Furth rat: establishment of a continuous tissue culture line producing lysozyme in vitro and in vivo.

A transplantable myelogenous leukemia of an inbred Wistar/Furth rat has been established in tissue culture and cloned. The resulting transplantable leukemia line demonstrates in vitro doubling time of 20 hr, colony-forming efficiency of 5% in liquid and methylcellulos-containing medium, and a saturation density of 3.0 x 106 cells/sq cm in liquid medium. Following intraperitoneal inoculation, newborn rats developed solid tumors, ascities, and leukemia with ld50 of5 x 103 cells and mean latency of 60 days. The tumor cell morphology was consistent with that of acute myelogenous leukemia. Histochemical staining for myeloid enzymes revealed no evidence of myeloperoxidase, esterase, or leukocyte alkaline phosphatase; however, fluorescent antibody staining for lysozyme was markedly positive. Serum, urine, and ascitic fluid from rats with transplanted leukemia also contained elevated levels of lysozyme. There was no detectable type-CRNA virus production by this cell line after as long as 100 days in vitro. This inbred rat myelogenous leukemia should provide a useful model for studies of chemotherapy and immunoltherapy of human acute myelogenous leukemia.