Stimulated Lymphocyte Cultures Research Articles

A micro-incubation chamber technique for testing the immunological activity of cultured lymphocytes.

The micro‐incubation chamber technique of Cunningham (1965) has been used for testing transformed cells in sheep red cell stimulated lymphocyte cultures for the ability to give pericellular lysis (lytic plaques) in sheep red cell monolayers. The variations around the means for total cell numbers and plaque‐forming cell numbers in series of chambers plated in parallel have been estimated.The plaque‐forming ability was found to be dependent on complement and temperature indicating an immunological lytic reaction. Evidence is presented for active protein synthesis in and liberation from the cells showing the ability to form lytic plaques.Cells stored at low temperature were able to form lytic plaques after several days' storage although a gradual reduction in the plaque‐forming ability was noticed.

Correlation of tuberculin skin reaction with in vitro lymphocyte transformation.

Several investigators have noted the proliferative effect of tuberculin on short-term tissue cultures of peripheral blood lymphocytes from positive cutaneous reactors since it was first observed by Pearmain and associates (1) and Schreck (2) in 1963. It is generally agreed that a qualitative relationship exists between the presence or absence of transformation in tissue culture and a positive or negative tuberculin skin reaction. McFarland and Heilman (3) noted a rough quantitative relationship between the size of the skin reaction and the degree of in vitro lymphocyte transformation in response to tuberculins prepared from four different mycobacterial species. The present study was designed to de~ termine whether a quantitative relationship existed between the degree of in vitro lymphocyte stimulation by tuberculin in tissue culture and the size of the tuberculin skin reaction in normal subjects and in tuberculous patients. The degree of stimulation of short-term lymphocyte cultures by tuberculin may be estimated by several methods. The proportion of cells incorporating tritiated thymidine into DNA as observed on radioautographs was selected as the index in this study as it was believed to be most objective and to result in the maximal amount of spread between values for minimally and maximally stimulated cultures. The duration of culture, antigen concentration, and length of exposure to labeled