Establishment and characterization of murine bone marrow stromal macrophage line

The authors established a murine bone marrow stromal cell line QXMSC1 by discarding the suspensible hematopoietic cells and passaging the adherent stromal cells many times in long-term bone marrow culture. QXMSC1 cells have been passaged 65 times for 15 months and immortalized. The mean number of QXMSC1 chromosomes is 66 ± 4. The appearance of the cells is elliptical. There are many pseudopods and mononuclei under the optical microscope. Many lisosomes and phagosomes in cytoplasm exist under the transmission electron microscope. There are no desmosome junction between the cells, no lipid drops, no intermediate filament. Vimentin is positive and keratin is negative by stain of immunocytochemistry. Nonspecific lipase staining is positive. These results indicate that QXMSC1 cells are murine bone marrow macrophages.