Functional assessment of T cell depletion from bone marrow prior to therapeutic transplantation using limiting dilution culture methods.

We evaluate the usefulness of limiting dilution culture methods in assessing the extent of T lymphocyte depletion from bone marrow inocula, prior to transplant, using either ex vivo antibody/complement-mediated depletion or immunotoxin treatment. Complement-mediated depletion using anti-Leu-1 antibody was shown to result in a consistent decline of 99%-99.9% in the frequencies of T cells able to proliferate in mitogen-stimulated, interleukin-2 (IL-2)-supplemented cultures. Equivalent declines were demonstrated in frequencies of "helper" T cells able to respond to mitogen by making IL-2, and in "killer" T cells able to give rise to clones of cytotoxic effectors. In most experiments, a second cycle of anti-Leu-1 + complement treatment did not further diminish the fraction of proliferating cells, although T cells able to secrete IL-2 were additionally depleted following a second cycle of antibody and complement. The limiting dilution methods were found to be at least as sensitive as flow cytometric (FACS) methods for detecting residual T cell contamination after protocols involving complement-mediated lysis, and superior to FACS analysis for protocols involving T cell depletion by a ricin A chain-anti-T101 immunotoxin, in which treated T cells suffer functional impairment and eventual death after exposure to immunotoxin, but remain phenotypically detectable during FACS analysis. Although limiting dilution methods do not provide data as rapidly as FACS analyses, they do not require a cytofluorimeter, provide equal or greater sensitivity, and can assess functional impairment, for both helper and killer T cell sets, even in situations in which the depletion procedure does not lead to immediate cytolysis.