Inability of Intravenously Injected Monocellular Suspensions of Human Bone Marrow to Establish in the Nude Mouse

Mononuclear suspensions of normal and leukemic human bone marrow cells were injected into lethally irradiated nude mice. As judged by splenic focus assay, cells of human bone marrow suspensions were uniformly unable to establish colonies in the spleen, although comparably treated bone marrow cells from genetically unrealted mice readily produced such colonies. It thus appears that the nude mouse is able to prevent establishment of intravenously injected human bone marrow cells by means not involving T cell-dependent immunologic discrimination.