Synergism of Thymus and Bone Marrow in the Production of Graft-versus-host Splenomegaly in X-irradiated Hosts

Graft-versus-host splenomegaly may be elicited from 500 R X-irradiated F(1) hybrid hosts if the hosts are injected with bone marrow cells and thymus cells from parental strain donors. Cells from thymus only or bone marrow only will not elicit graft-versus-host splenomegaly in these hosts. In this requirement for cells from both sources, the bone marrow cells play a nonimmunologic, proliferative role in the splenomegaly, and the thymus cells carry out the immunologic attack. Thus the mechanism of this synergism is quite different from that reported for the humoral immune response to sheep erythrocytes in which both thymus and marrow interact in the production of the specific immunologic response itself.