TRANSPLANTATION AND IN VITRO ANALYSIS OF SOYBEAN-AGGLUTININ SEPARATED MOUSE SPLEEN CELLS

In human bone marrow allotransplantation, an in vitro method using soybean agglutinin(SBA) for enrichment of stem cells and depletion of mature T cells in the graft has been described (Reisner et al.;Lancet 2:1320,1980).To define the quality of the method,mouse spleen cells (C3H, C57/B6,BALB/c)containing about 30% of mature T cells were separated by SBA.The composition and functional capacity of the cell fraction known to contain the stem cells were characterized in vitro after each of two SBA-separation steps.In addition, the ability of the cell fraction to reconstitute successfully allogeneic irradiated (900R) mice was investigated. Only the two step SBA-separation procedure yielded satis…