Preleukemia in long-term plasmacytoma-regressor mice

Our previous results have indicated that mice whose plasmacytoma regressed following curative melphalan chemotherapy manifested various persistent immunohematological abnormalities including immunosuppression, myeloproliferation, as well as excessive production of and response to growth factors. Mice not bearing plasmacytoma treated with an identical dose of melphalan chemotherapy did not exhibit such abnormalities. In the present study we show that plasmacytoma-regressor mice (PRM) contain preleukemic cells which do not progress to leukemia in these mice. However, adoptive transfer of splenocytes originating in PRM to preirradiated but otherwise untreated syngeneic recipients resulted in the development of overt leukemia in these recipients. The presence of leukemia in the primary recipient mice was ascertained by blood counts as well as by spleen histology. Furthermore, splenocytes from the irradiated primary recipients adoptively transferred to non-irradiated secondary recipients caused leukemia formation in 100% of the secondary recipients. Sex chromosome analysis of the leukemic cells in the irradiated primary recipients clearly showed that they originated in the PRM donors. Two leukemic lines were established from leukemias developing in the secondary recipients and both expressed surface markers of hematopoietic progenitor cells as well as markers of T cells. We suggest that PRM could serve as an animal model to investigate development of chemotherapy-related leukemia in humans.