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Updated: Aug 10, 2026
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Detection of Residual Donor Erythroid Progenitor Cells after Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation for Patients with Hemoglobinopathies
Published on: September 6, 2017
Hematopoietic chimerism monitoring based on STRs: quantitative platform performance on sequential samples
Don Kristt1, Moshe Israeli, Ronit Narinski
1Laboratory of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, Rabin Medical Center, Petach Tikvah, Israel. dkristt@clalit.org.il
Journal of Biomolecular Techniques : JBT
|March 9, 2006
Summary
Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) chimerism tracking is feasible using STR-DNA analysis. This study confirms technical accuracy and precision for reliable long-term monitoring of donor-recipient cellularity.
Area of Science:
- Molecular Biology
- Transplantation Immunology
- Forensic Genetics
Background:
- Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) establishes donor-recipient chimerism, crucial for treatment success.
- Quantitative assessment of chimerism from peripheral blood using short tandem repeat DNA (STR-DNA) is standard practice.
- Variability in chimerism values across patient samples necessitates evaluating technical platform performance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To systematically assess the longitudinal performance and technical variability of STR markers for chimerism analysis.
- To determine the accuracy and precision of a specific platform (ABI with SGM Plus kit) for quantitative chimerism monitoring.
- To identify sources of technical variability in chimerism estimation.
Main Methods:
- Quantitative evaluation of STR marker performance in controlled chimeric models and patient samples (>500 marker loci).
- Utilized the ChimerTrack utility for computing percent chimerism, mean chimerism, standard deviation, and coefficient of variance.
- Assessed accuracy, precision, and fragment size calling of the ABI platform and SGM Plus kit.
Main Results:
- Individual markers showed 88-98% accuracy and 92-100% precision in chimeric models, with a mean error of 2%.
- Fragment size calling exceeded 99% accuracy and precision.
- Technical variability in chimerism estimation was linked to allelic differential amplification efficiency, influenced by signal amplitude, dye label, marker size, and allelic size interval.
Conclusions:
- Long-term chimerism tracking is routinely feasible with the evaluated platform and ChimerTrack software.
- Mean percent chimerism provides a technically accurate approximation (98%) of true chimeric status.
- Guidelines for selecting an optimized marker profile for improved chimerism analysis are presented.
