Serial bone marrow sampling for long-term follow up of human hematopoiesis in NOD/SCID mice
Verlinden, S.F.; van Es, H.H.; van Bekkum, D.W.
Experimental Hematology 26(7): 627-630
1998
ISSN/ISBN: 0301-472X PMID: 9657138 Document Number: 497436
The study of long-term human hematopoiesis in immunodeficient mice is greatly facilitated by sequential bone marrow (BM) sampling in individual animals. Until now, however, the only way to obtain these samples was by sacrificing the mice. In this paper we describe a novel technique for obtaining BM cells by aspiration from the femur of living mice. The technique is simple and efficient and does not disable the animals. On average 1.6 +- X 106 )nucleated cells can be collected from one femur at a time, which is sufficient for flow cytometry analysis, cytospin preparations, and polymerase chain reaction assays. The cellular composition of the samples obtained by puncture is identical to that of BM harvested by flushing the femur after sacrificing the animals. We present the results of 81 punctures of the femur in HuNOD/SCID chimeras engrafted with Ficoll-separated or CD34bright purified cells from human umbilical cord blood.