Bone marrow-thymus interactions during thymic lymphomagenesis induced by fractionated radiation exposure in B10 mice: analysis using bone marrow transplantation between Thy 1 congenic mice.

Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) experiments were conducted using B10.Thy 1 congenic mice to explore the nature of bone marrow-thymus interactions during thymic lymphomagenesis induced by fractionated whole-body X-irradiation (FX). BMT from normal Thy 1 congenic donors into FX-treated recipients one day after FX-treatment resulted in the suppression of tumor development; the suppression being exponentially proportional to the increasing number of bone marrow cells injected. The suppression of tumor development by BMT was shown to be due to prevention of the appearance of prelymphoma cells. BMT from FX-treated donors, which are deficient in pre T cells, into lethally (9 Gy) irradiated Thy 1 congenic recipients resulted in the development of high incidence of thymic lymphomas most of which (approximately 76%) were host-derived, whereas no lymphomas were recovered from the recipients of normal bone marrow. These results suggest that intrathymic T cell precursors which initially repopulate the depleted thymus are prone to undergo preneoplastic changes in the absence of recruitment of more primitive T cell precursors (pre T cells) from the bone marrow but they undergo normal differentiation when large number of pre T cells are available. It was concluded that primary cause of the FX-induced thymic lymphomagenesis was a shortage in supply of pre T cells from the bone marrow to the depleted thymus, which caused differentiation arrest of the progeny of regenerating intrathymic T cell precursors, followed by development of prelymphoma cells that eventually evolve into autonomous lymphoma cells within the thymus.