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- Title
Determining the extent of maternal-foetal chimerism in cord blood.
- Authors
Opstelten, Rianne; Slot, Manon C.; Lardy, Neubury M.; Lankester, Arjan C.; Mulder, Arend; Claas, Frans H. J.; van Rood, Jon J.; Amsen, Derk
- Abstract
During pregnancy, maternal T cells can enter the foetus, leading to maternal-foetal chimerism. This phenomenon may affect how leukaemia patients respond to transplantation therapy using stem cells from cord blood (CB). It has been proposed that maternal T cells, primed to inherited paternal HLAs, are present in CB transplants and help to suppress leukaemic relapse. Several studies have reported evidence for the presence of maternal T cells in most CBs at sufficiently high numbers to lend credence to this idea. We here aimed to functionally characterise maternal T cells from CB. To our surprise, we could not isolate viable maternal cells from CB even after using state-of-the-art enrichment techniques that allow detection of viable cells in heterologous populations at frequencies that were several orders of magnitude lower than reported frequencies of maternal T cells in CB. In support of these results, we could only detect maternal DNA in a minority of samples and at insufficient amounts for reliable quantification through a sensitive PCR-based assay to measure In/Del polymorphisms. We conclude that maternal microchimerism is far less prominent than reported, at least in our cohort of CBs, and discuss possible explanations and implications.
- Publication
Scientific Reports, 2019, Vol 9, Issue 1, pN.PAG
- ISSN
2045-2322
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41598-019-41733-w