Effectiveness of cytopenia prophylaxis for different filgrastim and pegfilgrastim schedules in a chemotherapy mouse model.

Objectives: Recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (rhG-CSF) is widely used to treat neutropenia during cytotoxic chemotherapy. The optimal scheduling of rhG-CSF is unknown and can hardly be tested in clinical studies due to numerous therapy parameters affecting outcome (chemotherapeutic regimen, rhG-CSF schedules, individual covariables). Motivated by biomathematical model simulations, we aim to investigate different rhG-CSF schedules in a preclinical chemotherapy mouse model.

Allogeneic non-adherent bone marrow cells facilitate hematopoietic recovery but do not lead to allogeneic engraftment.

Background: Non adherent bone marrow derived cells (NA-BMCs) have recently been described to give rise to multiple mesenchymal phenotypes and have an impact in tissue regeneration. Therefore, the effects of murine bone marrow derived NA-BMCs were investigated with regard to engraftment capacities in allogeneic and syngeneic stem cell transplantation using transgenic, human CD4(+), murine CD4(-/-), HLA-DR3(+) mice.

Methodology/principal Findings: Bone marrow cells were harvested from C57Bl/6 and Balb/c wild-type mice, expanded to NA-BMCs for 4 days and characterized by flow cytometry before transplantation in lethally irradiated recipient mice.

Duplex polymerase chain reaction quantification of human cells in a murine background.

Studies of the regenerative potential of human stem cells commonly involve their transplantation into immune-deficient mice or in vitro coculture with mouse cells. The optimal use of such models requires the detection and quantification of relatively low numbers of human cells in a murine background. We report here a duplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) approach involving the coamplification of human-and mouse-specific repetitive sequences.