ANALYSIS OF CANDIDATE HUMAN BLOOD STEM-CELLS IN HUMANIZED IMMUNE-DEFICIENCY SCID MICE

Immune deficient SCID mice support the hematopoietic development of su rgically implanted human fetal thymus and bone. The usability of the r esulting SCID-hu hematolymphoid chimaera as an assay system for human candidate blood stem cells was suggested by the observation that allog eneic CD34+ cells sorted from fetal liver and bone marrow can engraft and differentiate in the transplanted human thymus and bone marrow. Th e SCID-hu mouse has been further used, in combination with a mouse bon e marrow stromal cell line that supports human myeloid and B lymphoid differentiation in vitro, to identify a minor subset of fetal CD34-exp ressing cells that exhibit multilineage hematopoietic potentialities.