Succesful therapy of viral leukemia by transplantation of histocompatibly unmatched marrow

The therapeutic effectiveness on murine viral-leukemia of allogeneic or hybrid hematopoietic cells transplanted from leukemia-virus resistant donors was evaluated and compared with that of syngeneic cells. Transplantation of syngeneic cells gave no protection to the viral-leukemic mice. Transplantation of spleen cells from allogeneic donors resulted in early deaths of both leukemic and non-leukemic recipients. Transplantation of hybrid spleen cells resulted in no long-term survival of the leukemic mice. However, there were a number of long-term survivors among the leukemic recipients of allogeneic or hybrid marrow cells. Engraftment of allogeneic marrow resulted in a large number of survivors. Hybrid marrow recipients showed an even better survival, but some leukemia relapses. Tests of the longterm survivors revealed that even though they gave no evidence of leukemia they still harbored the active virus. This suggests that the mechanism of protection may be related to some inherent characteristic of the donor cells rendering them refractory to viral transformation. A difference in graft-versus-host (GvH) response between the leukemic and control mice was also found after transplantation of allogeneic cells. While all of the controls died of GvH reaction, none of the leukemic recipients showed severe GvH response, suggesting a possible effect of the leukemia on histocompatibility. No GvH reaction was found with hybrid marrow engraftment, although some of the leukemic recipients reconstituted with F1 cells did die of leukemic relapse. (author)