Experimental animal models in the study of GVL reactions

The hypothesis that bone marrow transplantation (BMT) can provide an effective antileukemia reaction was tested in experimental models during the very earliest days of BMT research. Barnes and coworkers [1], in their 1956 paper entitled Treatment of Murine Leukaemia with X Rays and Homologous Bone Marrow, described the potential and problems of using allogeneic BMT for the treatment of leukemia in this way: When mice are given an otherwise lethal dose of x rays to the whole body they can recover if injected intravenously with homologous [allogeneic] myeloid cells…. This suggests that leukemia of the mouse might be successfully treated. On the one hand, the dose of x rays which is sufficiently lethal to normal cells of the bone marrow and lymphatic tissues to cause death of the animal might well be completely lethal to leukemic cells…. On the other hand, if the dose of x rays sufficient to kill the animal is not 100% lethal to leukemic cells, the malignant condition would in these circumstances recur by growth from the surviving cells, since neither host not graft has the ability to resist; but, if homologous bone marrow from a different strain of mouse were given, the colonizing cells might retain the capacity of the donor to destroy by the reaction of immunity these residual leukemic cells-and perhaps also the host.