Evidence of Bone Marrow Involvement by In Vitro Growth of Lymphoma Colonies in a Child with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma

Abstract

A 13-year-old boy with Burkitt's lymphoma of clinical stage III was refered to us. Remission was achieved by the treatment with COMP. But his disease soon recurred and became resistant to conventional chemoradiotherapy. Marrow lethal therapy using autologous bone marrow transplantation was planned. After confirming no tumor involvement of the marrow, marrow nucleated cells were collected and cryopreserved. But in vitro lymphoma colonies were grown from morphologically normal bone marrow samples. The colonies were huge enough to be seen macroscopically in a 35mm tissue culture plate. They consisted of from 10,000 to 50,000 cells and did not degenerate after 6 weeks in culture. Cells within the colonies were large lymphoblasts with basophilic cytoplasm and many vacuoles in Wright-stained preparation. About 40% of the cells in pooled colonies had surface IgM and 70% had cytoplasmic IgM. Growth of lymphoma colonies in vitro may be a useful tool for evaluating bone marrow involvement with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.