Quantitative analysis of microchimerism with Y-chromosome-specific PCR in canine small bowel transplantation

Passenger leukocytes, normal constituents of whole organs, migrate after transplantation and produce microchimerism, which is suggested to be essential for sustained survival of allografts.1 Canines have been widely used as a more clinically relevant outbred large animal transplantation model, rather than inbred rodent, and provided important information to directly improve the results of clinical transplantation. However, the analysis of microchimerism in this species is hampered by the lack of reagents. In this study, we demonstrate recently developed quantitative PCR analysis of chimerism in dog samples using primers specific for the sex determining region-Y (SRY) gene. Profitability of this method to determine the level of chimerism after organ transplantation was also shown in samples obtained from sex-mismatched canine small bowel transplantation (SBTx).