[Progress of chimerism research after allo-bone marrow transplantation]

Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is an effective therapy for a variety of hematologic and immunodeficient diseases. Two possible situations of chimerism can be encountered when assessing the hematological status in recipient post-allo-BMT: 1. complete chimerism, where the marrow and circulating blood cells all are donor origin; 2. mixed chimerism, the cell components in recipient are both donor and recipient origins. Formation of the different kinds of chimerism are influenced by some factors, included the amount of infused hematopoietic stem cells, the ratio of T cells from donor and recipient, conditioning regimen and patient's condition. The clinical significance was different for the forms and development of chimerism. There are several detecting methods for chimerism, such as microsatellite assay, karyotyping of chromosome, conversion of blood group, red blood cell antigen, restriction fragment length polymorphism, variable number of tandem repeat, and PCR. Above-mentioned aspects of chimerism research were reviewed.