Technique for retransplanting heterotopic heart grafts in mice

✍ Scribed by Qi Li; Yinong Wang; Tai Yi; Geetha Chalasani; Zhenhua Dai; Marc I. Lorber; George Tellides; Fadi G. Lakkis

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 73 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0738-1085
• DOI: 10.1002/micr.20065

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Removal of a transplanted organ from its original recipient and retransplanting it into a new host is an important method to study the role of the graft in the rejection process. Here we describe a novel technique of heart retransplantation in the mouse. In this technique, a primarily vascularized heart graft is anastomosed to the abdominal aorta and inferior vena cava of a syngeneic or immunodeficient allogeneic mouse, using standard techniques. Either 10 or 70 days later, the same graft is retransplanted into the abdomen of a second mouse by end‐to‐side anastomosis of the donor (first recipient) aortic and inferior vena cava's cuffs to the second recipient's abdominal aorta and inferior vena cava, respectively. A greater than 90% success rate was achieved by using this microsurgical technique. This method should be useful for studying intragraft factors, such as ischemia‐reperfusion injury and donor antigen‐presenting cells, on the outcomes of transplantations. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. Microsurgery 24:465–467, 2004.