Immunological studies in the horse are frequently hampered by lack of environmental control, complicated study design, and ethical concerns when performing high risk studies. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the utility of a xenograft model for studying acute equine immune responses. Immunocompromised non obese diabetic (NOD). sudden combined immunodeficiency (scid).gamma-/- (NSG) mice were engrafted with either equine peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) or equine bone marrow to determine an optimal protocol for equine lymphocyte engraftment. We found that both PBL and bone marrow grafts populated the host mice successfully. Bone marrow transplants were technically more challenging and required further processing to retard graft versus host disease. Graft vs host disease was apparent at 28 days post-PBL transfer and 56 days post-bone marrow transfer. The results of these studies support the use of mouse hosts to study acute equine immune responses and that different engraftment techniques can be used depending on the experimental design.
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