Culture of Peripheral Blood Leucocytes for Chromosome Analysis Using a Few Drops of Whole Blood.

A number of modifications of Moorhead's original technique for culturing peripheral leucocytes have been described, enabling cultures to be grown from a few drops of blood (Arakaki and Sparkes, I963; Edwards, I962; Robinson, Bishun, Rashad, and Morton, I964). They require the use of stored calf, chick, or human serum, and this has obvious disadvantages for the small laboratory. We have, therefore, recently been using a technique for culturing small amounts of blood from a baby using plasma from a parent or other convenient adult. Three or four drops of blood can be collected from the baby from a heel prick. They can be conveniently collected into a disposable syringe containing o5 ml. Glaxo i99 medium and ioo units heparin. If the mixture is transferred to a bottle it can be kept for up to an hour at least. A io-ml. blood sample is taken from the parent, and some of this is used to set up a culture in the usual way. The residue is then spun quickly, until i.5 ml. clear plasma can be removed. To ensure