THE BONE MARROW PROCEDURE FOR THE ASSAY OF LIVER EXTRACTS FOR ANTI-PERNICIOUS ANEMIA ACTIVITY

¹ From the Connaught Laboratories, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Using the method of Pace and Fisher, adapted from that of Overbeek et al., we have been unable to confirm their reports that a quantitative or qualitative relationship exists between the occurrence of a "peak" migration of cells from normal guinea pig bone marrow grown in a medium of saline, plasma, and liver extract and the activity of the extracts. Peak migration does not take place consistently at any dilution from 1:100 to 1:300,000 of extracts of known antipernicious anemia activity, but occurs irregularly whether or not any liver extract is present. There is little, if any, added stimulation by purified extracts above that taking place in plasma and salt solutions; the graph of growth-concentration appears to be approximately a straight line with zero slope in all cases. No difference sufficiently marked to be used as the basis of an assay method seems to exist between the response to active and to inactive extracts, or to extracts of differing clinical activity. No definite relationship has been demonstrated between response and anti-pernicious anemia activity, content of organic solids, or content of folic acid.

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