Figure 2

The requirement for first-stage antibody treatmentin advance of BMT. Except for control mice which received no treatment, all mice represented in this figure received CD4, CD8 and CD40L antibodies at the time of BMT (1 mg each ip on days 0, 2 and 4, relative to BMT on day 0). The first-stage antibody treatment was varied as described. CBA mice (A) and BALB/c mice (B) were transplanted with different doses of T cell depleted B10 BM, under the cover non-depleting CD4, CD8 and CD40L mAbs. Only one group of mice from each strain received the mAb treatment 4 weeks prior to BMT. Hematopoietic chimerism determined by flow cytometry 120 days following BMT is shown. In both strains the difference between untransplanted controls and animals not treated in advance of BMT is not statistically significant. Survival of B10 skin grafts, transplanted 50 days following BMT is represented. Only animals where mixed chimerism could be detected accepted the skin grafts indefinitely (p < 0.01 to any other group). (C) CBA mice were treated with 3 × 1 mg of CD4 and CD8 mAbs alone, or combined with the same dose of CD40L mAbs, 4 weeks before the transplantation of 4×10⁷ T cell depleted B10 BM. One group was not treated at that time. Together with the BMT all animals were treated with CD4, CD8 and CD40L mAbs as described in Figure 1. Animals that did not receive BMT were used as negative controls. (D) Experiment identical to the one described in (C), using different combinations of mAb 4 weeks before BMT. No statistically significant difference was observed between the transplanted groups in the levels of hematopoietic chimerism 120 days following BMT.