FETAL STEM CELLS FOR TRANSPLANTATION

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Transplantation of fetal tissues has been advocated as a means of treating various life-threatening conditions. Fetal cells may be uniquely suited for transplantation because of: (1) their ability to grow and proliferate, (2) their ability to undergo cell and tissue differentiation (intrinsic plasticity), (3) their ability to produce growth factors, and (4) their reduced antigenicity compared to adult cells. If properly and ethically obtained, induced abortions would seem a voluminous source of transplantable cells and tissues this country. However, induced abortion tissues, and the women who would donate the tissues, have not been exhaustively characterized to determine if they are suitable for transplantation purposes. In addition, the optimal methods for collecting, processing, evaluating, maintaining, and banking fetal tissues and cell lines has not been determined. Our group is primarily interested in the use of fetal hematopoietic stem cells for in utero transplantation to treat inborn errors of metabolism, immune deficiencies, and hematologic disorders. We propose to characterize induced abortion tissues and the women donating the tissues with regard to suitability for fetal tissue transplantation. We plan to use protocols previously developed for the study of spontaneous abortions and currently in use to characterize induced abortion specimens with respect to bacterial and viral contamination, morphological abnormalities, and cytogenetic abnormalities. We will test whether our use of DNA technology to search for infectious and genetic etiologies may be more efficient and perhaps more sensitive than traditional microbiologic and cytogenetic techniques. We also will determine the yield, growth potential, cell types, and immunologic characteristics of cultured hematopoietic stem cells. Finally we will also determine whether the cultured cells can be cryopreserved, transported, and transplanted in a well-established in utero transplantation model.