Immunologic studies of canine bone marrow chimeras

When prospective male or female recipients from the Cooperstown colony were exposed to supralethal total body irradiation and were reconstituted with bone marrow obtained from genotypically DL-A-identical littermate or nonlittermate donors such treatment resulted, in regularly reproducible fashion, in the establishment of a long-term state of chimerism with no evidence of graft-versus-host disease in any of the recipients. The resulting chimeras have survived thus far for 882-1466 days, with donor red cell antigen and leukocyte sex marker evidence of the persistence of chimerism. Subsequent challenge of the chimeras with renal and skin allografts obtained from the specific donor of marrow resulted in the long-term survival of such transplants without any evidence of rejection for 833--1402 days. Skin allografts obtained from other dogs were, however, accorded first-set rejection times. Recent studies indicate that the state of allogeneic unresponsiveness produced by supralethal total body irradiation and bone marrow transplantation also extends to other organs from the donor of marrow, including heart, liver, pancreas and duodenum, and lung