Objective-In the absence of immunodeficiency, only microchimerism (<0.1%) has been achieved in human fetal recipients or nonhuman primates following in utero hematopoietic cell transplantation (IUHCT). We hypothesized that enhanced long-term engraftment might be more reliably achieved in microchimeric systems if higher levels of chimerism existed during development of adaptive immunity. To evaluate this hypothesis, we stimulated the donor cells with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and stem cell factor (SCF) prior to IUHCT in a chimerism-resistant murine strain combination.
Methods-DonorBalb/c marrow was cultured in media with or without VEGF and SCF supplementation for 12 hours prior to IUHCT into B6 fetuses at 14 days postcoitum (dpc). Donor cell phenotype, homing, and chimerism were assessed at short and long-term time points and transplanted animals received skin allografts at 8 weeks.Results-In pretreated allogeneic recipients, early chimerism rates were more than double that of controls (71% vs 33%, p = 0.01). These differences were associated with higher numbers of pretransplant donor cell colony-forming cells without change in donor cell homing. Despite prolonged skin allograft survival for pretreated recipients compared with controls (mean survival = 20.8 vs 8.2 days, p < 0.001), long-term engraftment was unchanged.Conclusions-These findings demonstrate that higher levels of early chimerism in recipients of cytokine-stimulated marrow result in improved short-term chimerism and tolerance. Future studies are needed to confirm the existence of a "threshold" level of chimerism necessary to sustain longterm engraftment.In utero hematopoietic cell transplantation (IUHCT) is a promising approach for treatment of a variety of genetic disorders without the need for immunosuppression [1][2][3][4][5][6]. IUHCT has been successfully applied clinically in the treatment of fetuses with prenatally diagnosed Xlinked severe combined immunodeficiency disease [5,7,8], but has not been successful for treatment of other congenital diseases. In the absence of immunosuppression, either no engraftment or only microchimerism (<0.1%) has been achieved in human fetal recipients or Similar observations have been made in "chimerism-resistant" murine strain combinations, where even long-term microchimerism has been difficult to achieve with clinically relevant doses of marrow. We have previously shown that durable donor-specific tolerance across major histocompatibility complex (MHC) barriers can be achieved by the mechanism of central thymic deletion when adequate levels of chimerism are present [16][17][18][19]. Therefore, we hypothesized that tolerance and long-term engraftment might be more reliably achieved in microchimeric systems by enhancing the levels of prenatal chimerism during development of adaptive immunity. One clinically relevant way to enhance chimerism is by ex vivo stimulation of the donor cells with cytokines that impart a competitive advantage for the homing and engraftment of the transplanted c...