HUMAN RECOMBINANT INTERLEUKIN-4 (HURIL-4) IMPROVES SCID MOUSE RECONSTITUTION WITH HUMAN PERIPHERAL-BLOOD LYMPHOCYTES

The application of human-scid mouse chimera (hu-scid) technology has s ome limitations, because of the variable amounts and functional hetero geneity of human cells recovered from engrafted mice. Attempts to opti mize the construction of hu-scid chimeras with human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (Hu-PBMC) by using in vivo anti-asialo GM1 antibody treatment in mice in order to eliminate natural killer cells have been published by other authors with interesting results. In this study, H u-PBMC were incubated in vitro with human recombinant interleukin-4 (H urIL-4) or human recombinant interleukin-2 (HurIL-2) for two hours and were intraperitoneally transferred into scid mice. Total human IgM an d IgG levels in hu-scid sera, human cell markers in the thymus and in the spleen of grafted mice were considered as parameters of successful engraftment. HurIL-4 significantly enhanced human immunoglobulin prod uction while HurIL-2 did not show any obvious effect. Human cell marke rs (CD2 and CD19) were significantly higher in the group of HurIL-4 tr eated Hu-PBMC than in the other groups, despite the high variability i n human cell proliferation in the recipients. Thus, HurIL-4 can be use d as an adjuvant growth factor which improves successful engraftment o f human peripheral blood lymphocytes in scid mice.