Chapter 10 - Exploitation of Surface Molecules for Separation of Cells from Mosaic Livers

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the exploitation of surface molecules for separation of cells from mosaic livers. The liver parenchyma is a biochemically mosaic tissue. This natural mosaicism has been exploited to demonstrate the clonal nature of early hyperplastic liver lesions arising during chemically induced liver carcinogenesis in mice. Natural mosaicism has been employed in an analogous manner in the past to demonstrate clonality of some human tumors. Two immunological approaches to purification of donor-origin hepatocytes from genotypic mosaic livers, differential hepatocyte rosetting, and complement-mediated cytolysis have provided 4- to 11-fold enrichments for donor-origin hepatocytes. A panning technique is suitable for purification of host-origin hepatocytes. A combination of these cell separation strategies should make possible preparative scale purification of donor and host-origin cells from genotypic mosaic rat livers. In principle, the techniques should be applicable to other genotypic mosaic tissues in which developmental or pathogenic cellular lineages must be elucidated. This panning separation of host-origin cells is a positive immunoselective technique in contrast to the two negative selection techniques described as donor-origin cells.