Long-term survival of cardiac xenografts in fully xenogeneic (mouse --> rat) bone marrow chimeras

BACKGROUND: The shortage of human hearts remains a major barrier to the efficacy of heart transplantation for the treatment of end-stage heart disease. One potential solution to the supply problem would be the use of hearts from nonhuman donors (xenografts). We have established a model of mouse to rat xenogeneic bone marrow chimerism, and in this study we have hypothesized that such chimeric rats will accept both donor and recipient specific heart grafts while rejecting third-party mouse and rat grafts. We also investigated humoral responses in naive and chimeric rats with and without donor murine cardiac grafts. METHODS: Recipient Lewis rats (n = 22) were given 1100 cGy lethal total body irradiation and the same day received 300 x 10(6) donor B10.BR mouse bone marrow cells intravenously. Peripheral blood of surviving rats (n = 18) was typed at 4 weeks and then monthly thereafter. Donor and recipient specific and third-party heterotopic heart transplantations were performed at 6 to 8 weeks after reconstitution with bone marrow. RESULTS: Multilineage bone marrow chimerism was produced in all experimental animals with complete replacement of recipient marrow by donor cells. Murine donor and rat recipient strain hearts transplanted in chimeric rats survived indefinitely. Third-party rat and mouse hearts were rejected, though at a slower rate than bone marrow matched naive controls. High levels of antimouse antibodies were detected in rats with rejected hearts. These antibodies were absent in chimeric animals with long-term surviving heart grafts. CONCLUSIONS: Long-term multilineage bone marrow chimerism can be produced in a mouse --> rat bone marrow transplant model. Long-term survival of donor specific and recipient specific vascularized cardiac grafts can be produced in these chimeric animals. These animals are clinically normal but show signs of subclinical immunosuppression regimen as they reject third-party hearts later than naive animals. Our results suggest that antibodies also play a significant role in concordant xenograft rejection, and induction of bone marrow chimerism can overcome this barrier.