Facial vein injection of human cells in severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) neonatal mice

Nimshitha Pavathuparambil Abdul Manaph; Mohammed Al-Hawwas; Liang Liu; Donghui Liu; John Hayball; Xin-Fu Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.mex.2018.10.006

Facial vein injection of human cells in severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) neonatal mice

MethodsX. 2018 Oct 6:5:1281-1286. doi: 10.1016/j.mex.2018.10.006. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Nimshitha Pavathuparambil Abdul Manaph^{1

2

3}, Mohammed Al-Hawwas¹, Liang Liu¹, Donghui Liu^{1

4}, John Hayball¹, Xin-Fu Zhou¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, Sansom Institute, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, South Australia, Australia.
² Central Northern Adelaide Renal and Transplantation Service, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide 5000, South Australia, Australia.
³ School of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5000, South Australia, Australia.
⁴ Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Drug Screening, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China.

Abstract

Intravenous injection is a standard procedure for delivering human stem cells and therapeutic agents. Currently, genetically modified severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice are used for engraftment studies using human cells. SCID neonates have better integration and survivability of human cells compared to adult SCID mice, as their immune system will not be developed in the first few days after birth. However, intravenous injections in neonates are difficult. This protocol describes a reliable and reproducible method for injecting cells into the facial vein of P3/P4 (3 or 4 days post-birth) SCID neonates to study their engraftment. The injection was safe and well tolerated by the pups. Post-injection analysis revealed the distribution of tagged cells in different organs. Results suggest that this new method can serve as a pre-analysis for transplantation studies using human stem cells before in vivo animal model testing.

Keywords: Delivery; Facial vein; Facial vein injection in P3/P4 pups; Intravenous injection; Neonates; Stem cells.