Center for Immunology and Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Laboratory of Immune Cell Biology, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2023;2580:283-292. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2740-2_17.
Intra-thymic injection is a powerful tool for adoptive transfer of cells, cellular tag reagents for tracking recent thymic emigrants (RTEs), or other substances directly into the thymus. The traditional approach developed decades ago requires an invasive surgery to open the thoracic cavity and visualize the thymus. Subsequently, a technique was developed requiring only a small skin incision needed to identify the precise injection site. Nevertheless, both techniques require surgical intervention, and this can lead to elevated animal stress levels and pain which necessitates analgesic medication administration. Here we describe a less invasive technique allowing in situ visualization and transfer of cell suspensions or substances into the thymus via an ultrasound-guided intra-thymic injection approach.
胸腺内注射是将细胞、用于追踪近期胸腺迁出细胞（RTE）的细胞标记试剂或其他物质直接注入胸腺的有效工具。几十年前开发的传统方法需要进行开胸手术以观察胸腺。随后，开发了一种仅需要小的皮肤切口即可确定精确注射部位的技术。然而，这两种技术都需要手术干预，这可能导致动物应激水平和疼痛增加，需要给予镇痛药物治疗。在这里，我们描述了一种微创技术，通过超声引导的胸腺内注射方法，可以在原位可视化并将细胞悬浮液或物质转移到胸腺中。
