Syngeneic Transplants with Modified Chimeric Hematopoietic Tumors

This protocol describes strategies to rapidly transduce tumor cells ex vivo and then transplant modified cells into immunocompetent-recipient mice. Inherent in the definition of a bona fide murine hematopoietic malignancy, unlike a myelo- or lympho-proliferative disease, is the ability to transplant tumors and give rise to a malignancy in recipient animals. This characteristic of hematopoietic disease makes these tumors a tractable model for examining the role of specific genes in tumor growth, dissemination, or therapeutic response. Additionally, because of the systemic nature of hematopoietic malignancies, transplanted tumors are frequently pathologically indistinguishable from donor malignancies-allowing one to perform decisive therapy studies on large cohorts of transplant recipients. Finally, following ex vivo manipulation, transplanted tumors can be made chimeric for the presence of defined retrovirally induced alterations. Thus, these malignancies can be made to resemble genetically heterogeneous human tumors that are in the process of acquiring new capabilities. In these experiments, fluorescent markers serve as a surrogate marker for the expression of a defined alteration, and the change in the percentage of fluorescent cells in a tumor population over time or in response to therapy can be used to gauge the impact of specific alterations on tumor behavior.