This Month in RES History - August '22

This Month in RES History

Join Communication Committee member Samson Kosemani as he looks back into the great science hidden in the RES archives.

Lymphocyte Depletion in the Induction of Chimerism in Mice

In order to have successful allogeneic transplantation of the bone marrow, lymphocyte depletion is one of the notable ways to immunosuppress the recipient organism (mouse, in this case). However, as of 1971, there had not been any reports on the role of lymphocyte depletion in the elongation of erythrocyte chimerism in mice.

In an experiment, John Deaton demonstrates that lymphocyte depletion in the mice receiving the graft regardless of the treatment with cyclophosphamide is capable of inducing elongation of erythrocyte chimerism in mice. In practice, the lymph of the recipient animals was drained via the thoracic duct, and the mice were kept in their cages for 48 hours.

Notably, John Deaton observed that the donor antigen in the erythrocytes of the recipient mice persisted for 12 weeks in lymphocyte-depleted ones as opposed to 4 weeks in the sham-operated host.