Standardization of procedures for ectopic marrow grafting: I. Influence of sex of recipient.
Bone marrow plugs implanted beneath the renal capsule of a normal syngeneic mouse recipient develop, within a few weeks, into a shell of marrow-containing bone. The marrow stromal microenvironment of the implant is reported to be of donor origin and therefore the technique has the potential for development into a quantitative assay of the stroma, or stroma-forming, capacity of the implanted marrow. A surprising difference has been shown, however, in that the female mouse does not permit the development of such an ectopic implant to the same extent as does a male recipient. The suppression of development of the implant is particularly dramatic when marrow from a male donor is implanted into a female recipient, but is strongly operative even upon donor marrow from a syngeneic female. The effect is partly strain dependent, being more pronounced in C57B1/6 and B6D2F1 mice than in DBA/2 or Balb/c. Castration and ovariectomy do not abrogate or modify the suppression. On the other hand, exposure of recipients to 6 Gy 137Cs gamma-radiation before implantation results in bigger implants developing in male recipients, and the suppressive effect of the female recipient upon the graft is reduced considerably or eliminated altogether. Marrow plugs were implanted into chimeras made by transplanting marrow from syngeneic male or female donors, i.e., into heavily irradiated B6D2F1 mice of the same or opposite sex. In female mice repopulated with marrow cells from male donors, the ectopic implants contained 2-3 times as many spleen colony-forming units (CFU-S) as did those in female mice populated by female marrow cells. Ectopic implants into male mice repopulated with female marrow cells contained fewer CFU-S than implants into male recipients having a male marrow, though the differences are smaller than those found in female recipients and may not be significant.
D000818:Animals; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D005260:Female; D007668:Kidney; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008815:Mice, Inbred Strains; D009919:Orchiectomy; D010052:Ovariectomy; D011828:Radiation Chimera; D012723:Sex; D014916:Whole-Body Irradiation