In vivo assessment of hematopoietic cell homing and engraftment in zebrafish using bioluminescence imaging

Abstract

Hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) has been increasingly used as treatment for malignant and non-malignant diseases over the past 40 years. Despite many advancements made in the field, this procedure continues to face some major challenges, including graft versus host disease and the limited donor availability. Current researches are directed at expanding the number of hematopoietic stem cells and/or improving the HSC homing, especially when the donor cell number is low. Zebrafish has emerged as a versatile organism to study HCT due to its cost-effectiveness and high degree of genetic similarities to mammals. As post-mortem analysis of engraftment following HCT does not offer rapid and long-term continuous monitoring of the engraftment process, we sought to use bioluminescence imaging (BLI) in our HCT study. We generated transgenic zebrafish line that ubiquitously expressed the firefly luciferase. We optimized the anesthesia regiments and the BLI settings used in our system. Finally, using in vivo BLI, we were able to longitudinally monitor the dynamic of donor cells in the transplant recipients and observe the effect of ex vivo prostaglandin E2 treatment on the early donor cell engraftment and the survival of the transplant recipients.