Epithelial tissue chimerism after human hematopoietic cell transplantation is a real phenomenon

Bone marrow transplantation in animals has been shown to generate epithelial populations, a phenomenon that has also recently been suggested to take place after human hematopoietic cell transplantation. However, reports in humans are not conclusive because they still leave open the possibility that the identified donor-derived cells are not epithelial cells but intraepithelial lymphocytes. Here, we demonstrate that donor-derived CD45+ hematopoietic cells in close contact with epithelial tissue may be falsely characterized as donor-derived epithelial cells if the three-dimensional structure of the tissue is not considered and the hematopoietic markers are not examined. By using a rigorous three-dimensional analysis on single sections of colon biopsies triple stained with donor-specific, epithelial-specific, and hematopoietic-specific markers we demonstrate that chimerism of colon epithelium is a real phenomenon occurring constantly after human hematopoietic cell transplantation. We exclude horizontal DNA transfer or cell fusion as the underlying mechanism of our findings. Tissue damage enhances the engraftment of the donor-derived epithelial cells. The physiological and therapeutical role of the donor-derived epithelial cells after human hematopoietic cell transplantation needs further investigation. However, their identification requires stringent and unequivocal detection systems.