A study of the development of cytotoxic antibodies produced in recipients of xenografts (heterografts) of iliac bone.

There have been a number of studies of immunological reactions elicited by foreign bone grafts in various species of experimental animals. Various techniques have been employed to detect the immune response, ranging from the examination of serum of recipients of bone grafts for the presence of various antibodies, to the examination of the changes in the draining lymph nodes and the assessment of the effect on survival of a subsequent skin graft. There have also been studies of the effect of various forms of treatment upon the antigenicity of bone allografts (homografts), but little work has yet been done on the antigenicity of bone xenografts (heterografts) (Burwell I 964, 1 969 ; Nisbet I 966). The purpose of this paper is to examine the immune response to fresh and treated bone xenografts using rats receiving sheep iliac bone. The histological features of these grafts have been studied in parallel and have been reported in a previous paper (Salama, Burwell and Dickson 1973).