Generation of human/rat xenograft animal model for the study of human donor stem cell behaviors in vivo.

Aim: To accurately and realistically elucidate human stem cell behaviors in vivo and the fundamental mechanisms controlling human stem cell fates in vivo, which is urgently required in regenerative medicine and treatments for some human diseases, a surrogate human-rat chimera model was developed.

Methods: Human-rat chimeras were achieved by in utero transplanting low-density mononuclear cells from human umbilical cord blood into the fetal rats at 9-11 d of gestation, and subsequently, a variety of methods, including flow cytometry, PCR as well as immunohistochemical assay, were used to test the human donor contribution in the recipients.

Results: Of 29 live-born recipients, 19 had the presence of human CD45(+) cells in peripheral blood (PB) detected by flow cytometry, while PCR analysis on genomic DNA from 11 different adult tissues showed that 14 selected from flow cytometry-positive 19 animals possessed of donor-derived human cell engraftment in multiple tissues (i.e. liver, spleen, thymus, heart, kidney, blood, lung, muscle, gut and skin) examined at the time of tissue collection, as confirmed by detecting human beta2-microglobulin expression using immunohistochemistry. In this xenogeneic system, the engrafted donor-derived human cells persisted in multiple tissues for at least 6 mo after birth. Moreover, transplanted human donor cells underwent site-specific differentiation into CK18-positive human cells in chimeric liver and CD45-positive human cells in chimeric spleen and thymus of recipients.

Conclusion: Taken together, these findings suggest that we successfully developed human-rat chimeras, in which xenogeneic human cells exist up to 6 mo later. This humanized small animal model, which offers an in vivo environment more closely resembling to the situations in human, provides an invaluable and effective approach for in vivo investigating human stem cell behaviors, and further in vivo examining fundamental mechanisms controlling human stem cell fates in the future. The potential for new advances in our better understanding the living biological systems in human provided by investigators in humanized animals will remain promising.