Abstract
It is demonstrated that anemic guinea pig serum maintains erythropoiesis in organotypic cultures of fetal guinea pig liver for at least 14 days.
The action of the anemic serum seems be due to the stimulation of the differentiation of stem-cells into erythroblasts. If fetal guinea pig liver is cultured on normal serum the cytodifferentiation stops during the first days of culture whereas the maturation of normoblasts can continue for a few days. The number of stem-cells diminishes considerably and after 4 days they all disappear.
On the contrary in culture on anemic serum, their number is unaltered even after two weeks in culture and this seems to indicate that the anemic serum displays a favorable action in the maintenance of the pool of undifferentiated cells in the explants.
