Correction of murine beta-thalassemia by partial bone marrow chimerism: selective advantage of normal erythropoiesis

beta-Thalassemic mice were transplanted with normal congeneic BM cells after sublethal total body irradiation, which resulted in partial RBC chimerism and correction of anemia. Enumeration of donor-type early hemopoietic progenitor cells (CFU-S) demonstrated that the correction of anemia originated from a minority of normal immature BM cells. It is concluded that successful BMT in beta-thalassemia does not necessarily require ablation of endogenous BM.