BLOOD GROUPS OF APES AND MONKEYS: 
HUMAN AND SIMIAN TYPES 
J. Moor-Jankowski* 
INTRODUCTION** 
Until ten years ago little was known about 
the blood groups of man's closest relatives, the 
nonhuman primates. A thorough review by 
Franks ^ published in 1962 cites only 66 articles 
for the period beginning 1911, while some of the 
reports were on a single animal only, and many 
of the results claimed have since been disproved. 
This paucity of information was in contrast 
to the great amount of data available for cattle 
and mice : the former were investigated mainly 
because of the commercial importance of the 
information for stockbreeders, while the latter 
were ideal for experimental work because of 
their small size and ease of breeding. It is 
somewhat ironical that the convenience of us- 
ing mice took precedence over their taxonomic 
distance from man. 
The lack of information on blood groups of 
apes and monkeys may be ascribed to their lim- 
ited availability prior to 1960 for basic re- 
search, and to the lack of appropriate handling 
methods for repeated bleeding and immuniza- 
tion. Moreover, the serological techniques in 
use were complicated. Prior to the introduction 
of the absorption and titration techniques of 
Wiener and Moor-Jankowski - '^ blood typing of 
simians entailed the difficult preparation of 
unstable and low-titered eluates from human 
red cells treated with typing sera, a method 
introduced by Landsteiner and Miller in 1925.* 
The establishment of our own Laboratory for 
Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Pri- 
mates (LEMSIP) and access to animals main- 
tained by the U. S. Air Force and by some of 
the primate centers resolved the first difficulty 
by making an adequate number of animals 
available for our work. This, in turn, enabled 
*Laboratoi-y for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates 
(LEMSIP), New York University School of Medicine, New York 
♦♦Supported by USPHS, NIH, grant GM 12074. 
US to develop our selective absorption tech- 
nique- which can readily be carried out pro- 
vided that a sufficient number of test animals 
is available. Moreover, in the meantime, new 
methods of husbandry and handling simians 
for immunological experiments have been de- 
veloped in our laboratory. 
Among the 66 articles cited in the 1962 re- 
view by Franks,^ 16 were by Alexander S. 
Wiener, whose interest in simians predates 
his epoch-making discovery of the Rh factor. 
In 1962, Dr. Wiener and the author joined 
forces for a long-term study of blood groups 
of nonhuman primates. The results obtained 
during the first phase of our research program 
led us to establish the concept of human-type, 
simian-type and cross-immune-type blood 
groups in primates including man. The defini- 
tion of these three categories, at which we ar- 
rived in 1964, has been most conducive for plan- 
ning and advancement of further research. 
Human-type blood groups^-' of primate ani- 
mals are determined with reagents originally 
prepared for blood group tests in man, after 
suitable modification of these reagents by ab- 
sorption, dilution or elution, in order to elimi- 
nate the interfering reactions of non-specific 
heteroagglutinins. The human-type blood groups 
are the homologues in simians of blood groups 
of man. So far homologues of human A-B-0, 
M-N, Rh-Hr, I-i and Lewis systems have been 
found in all species of apes, to a lesser extent in 
Old World monkeys, and to a limited degree in 
New World monkeys. 
Simian-type blood groups^ are determined 
using reagents prepared by immunization with 
red cells of apes and monkeys. That simian-type 
blood groups may be present not only in simians 
but also in man has been demonstrated by Land- 
steiner and Wiener's discovery of the Rh factor 
in man,' detected by antisera of rabbits im- 
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