Influence of nicotine and cotinine on colony formation of myeloid and lymphoid progenitors.

Freshly isolated bone marrow cells (bmc) were cultivated in semisolid methylcellulose cultures with lineage-specific cytokines. Bone marrow cells were cultured with GM-CSF or M-CSF to assay for granulocyte-macrophage or macrophage progenitors (CFU-GM, CFU-M), with IL-7 to assay for B-cell progenitors (B-cell colony-forming unit, CFU-B), and with IL-5 to assay monopotent progenitors for eosinophils (CFU-eos). Nicotine and cotinine were diluted in PBS, sterile filtered, and added into cultures at final concentrations indicated on each graph. Data shown are means ± SD of the colony numbers from 4 different wells, representing 1 of 3 independent experiments.