Successful engraftment by leukemia initiating cells in adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia after direct intrahepatic injection into unconditioned newborn NOD/SCID mice.

Objective: Xenogeneic transplantation has been the gold standard for enumeration of leukemia initiating cells in acute myeloid and lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Most transplantation models have required conditioning in which the recipients were either irradiated or treated with chemotherapy prior to injection of human leukemia cells. In this study, we reported an undescribed model in which adult ALL cells were injected into unconditioned newborn nonobese diabetic severe combined immunodeficient mice via an intrahepatic route.