Utility of human bone marrow obtained incidental to orthopedic surgery for hematopoietic clonal assays.

We describe the establishment of a convenient method of acquiring human bone marrow cells for use in microcapillary clonal assays. Femoral epiphyseal and diaphyseal bone fragments and femoral canal reamings were collected incidental to total hip replacement surgery and cultured for human granulocyte-macrophage colony-forming units, erythroid burst-forming units and erythroid colony-forming units. This readily available source of normal human marrow provides an abundant quantity of hematopoietic progenitors of documented normalcy.