On the Analysis of Microchimerism
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Thomas Kroneis Medical University of Graz, Austria |
Abstract
During pregnancy an exchange of cells between mother and fetus takes place giving rise to life-long establishment of genetically distinct haploidentical cells in both individuals. This phenomenon, called microchimerism, occurred with the origin of mammals approximately 100 mio. years ago, is detected across many mammalian species and associated in humans with a wide range of effects including immunological protection, tissue repair, wound healing, cancer, autoimmune disorders and pregnancy complications.
In a current project on microchimerism we focus on unravelling the biological meaning of microchimerism covering fetal as well as maternal microchimerism, their context to the involved immune systems and basic scientific questions such as the routes microchimeric cells take to transmigrate to the other individuum. In the talk we will present the project and some of the current data including the detection of maternal microchimerism umbilical cord blood based on digital droplet PCR. Last, we report on our approach to implement spatial analysis – that we currently apply in colon cancer research – in microchimerism research.
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