Myosin-II Is a Major Modulator of Human Hematopoietic Stem Cell Proliferation and Differentiation

Blood ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 118 (21) ◽  
pp. 2343-2343
Author(s):  
Jae-Won Shin ◽  
Amnon Buxboim ◽  
Dennis E Discher

Abstract Abstract 2343 Non-muscle myosin-II (NMM-II) promotes cell division, membrane rigidity and adhesion to a rigid matrix, and so NMM-II activity might be predicted to be low in dormant hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and to increase with differentiation. Deletion of NMM-II is known to be embryonic lethal, but its role in adult HSC differentiation is not known. Recently, we showed that sustained pharmacological inhibition of NMM-II together with soft 2D matrices like the perivascular niches in marrow, rather than rigid like bone, maximizes both MK maturation and platelet generation (Shin et al., PNAS, 2011; 108:11458-63). HSCs exhibit some similarities to mature MKs in that long-term HSCs remain undivided in vivo while various progenitors and maturing cells rapidly expand in number. Here, reversible inhibition of NMM-II sustained over several cell cycles enriches long-term HSCs up to 20 fold by selective elimination of proliferating progenitors. CFSE dilution analysis indicates that inhibition of NMM-II eliminates the accumulation phase of hematopoietic progenitors and accelerates natural cell death rate by apoptosis. Interestingly, supplementation of G-CSF significantly enhances HSC survival under NMM-II inhibition and further accelerates progenitor elimination. Molecular profiling and functional analyses indicate that NMM-II isoforms play distinct roles during HSC differentiation. NMM-IIA is a marker for differentiation with significantly lower expression in HSCs than committed progenitors, which is consistent with greater membrane flexibility of HSCs measured by micropipette aspiration. In contrast, NMM-IIB is 5 fold higher in HSCs and progenitors than differentiated CD34− cells. HSC and progenitor numbers are also sensitive to matrix elasticity in a NMM-II dependent manner, with maximal expansion on soft and high-density fibronectin matrices (not collagen). However, upon NMM-II inhibition, the extent of HSC enrichment relative to multipotent progenitors is more sensitive to matrix ligand density than matrix elasticity. To identify physiological mechanisms of regulating NMM-II activity during early HSC differentiation, we investigated post-translational modifications of NMM-IIA, specifically the de-activating and isoform-specific phosphorylation at myosin Ser1943 (pS1943) in HSC and progenitors. In a phospho-specific flow cytometry approach, pS1943 level proves highest in HSCs and decreases during differentiation with Tpo and G-CSF but not SCF alone. TGF-beta inhibits the reduction of pS1943 level, consistent with TGF-beta's known role in HSC hibernation. Therefore, pS1943 level dictates HSC enrichment and parallels the dose-response to pharmacological NMM-II inhibitors. Furthermore, phospho-mimetic mutation of NMM-IIA at Ser1943 decreases cytoskeletal integrity, increases membrane flexibility, and limits matrix elasticity sensing, indicating that biophysical properties of HSCs can also be regulated by HSC-specific signaling via NMM-IIA heavy chain phosphorylation. Myosin-inhibited CD34+-derived bone marrow cells show reduced colony-forming unit progenitors in vitro, but maintain functional long-term HSCs in vivo in the marrows of xenografted mice with an added benefit to increase platelet circulation simultaneously. Therefore, myosin-II inhibition and soft, high ligand fibronectin constitutes an important ‘microenvironment mimetic’ approach to enrichment of long-term HSCs. Myosin-II is clearly a central, matrix-regulated node for HSC proliferation and differentiation. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Blood ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 87 (10) ◽  
pp. 4136-4142 ◽  
Author(s):  
I Kawashima ◽  
ED Zanjani ◽  
G Almaida-Porada ◽  
AW Flake ◽  
H Zeng ◽  
...  

Using in utero transplantation into fetal sheep, we examined the capability of human bone marrow CD34+ cells fractionated based on Kit protein expression to provide long-term in vivo engraftment. Twelve hundred to 5,000 CD34+ Kit-, CD34+ Kit(low), and CD34+ Kit(high) cells were injected into a total of 14 preimmune fetal sheep recipients using the amniotic bubble technique. Six fetuses were killed in utero 1.5 months after bone marrow cell transplantation. Two fetuses receiving CD34+ Kit(low) cells showed signs of engraftment according to analysis of CD45+ cells in their bone marrow cells and karyotype studies of the colonies grown in methylcellulose culture. In contrast, two fetuses receiving CD34+ Kit(high) cells and two fetuses receiving CD34+ Kit- cells failed to show evidence of significant engraftment. Two fetuses were absorbed. A total of six fetuses receiving different cell populations were allowed to proceed to term, and the newborn sheep were serially examined for the presence of chimerism. Again, only the two sheep receiving CD34+ Kit(low) cells exhibited signs of engraftment upon serial examination. Earlier in studies of murine hematopoiesis, we have shown stage-specific changes in Kit expression by the progenitors. The studies of human cells reported here are in agreement with observations in mice, and indicate that human hematopoietic stem cells are enriched in the Kit(low) population.


Blood ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 120 (21) ◽  
pp. 2309-2309
Author(s):  
Jian Huang ◽  
Peter S. Klein

Abstract Abstract 2309 Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) maintain the ability to self-renew and to differentiate into all lineages of the blood. The signaling pathways regulating hematopoietic stem cell (HSCs) self-renewal and differentiation are not well understood. We are very interested in understanding the roles of glycogen synthase kinase-3 (Gsk3) and the signaling pathways regulated by Gsk3 in HSCs. In our previous study (Journal of Clinical Investigation, December 2009) using loss of function approaches (inhibitors, RNAi, and knockout) in mice, we found that Gsk3 plays a pivotal role in controlling the decision between self-renewal and differentiation of HSCs. Disruption of Gsk3 in bone marrow transiently expands HSCs in a b-catenin dependent manner, consistent with a role for Wnt signaling. However, in long-term repopulation assays, disruption of Gsk3 progressively depletes HSCs through activation of mTOR. This long-term HSC depletion is prevented by mTOR inhibition and exacerbated by b-catenin knockout. Thus GSK3 regulates both Wnt and mTOR signaling in HSCs, with opposing effects on HSC self-renewal such that inhibition of Gsk3 in the presence of rapamycin expands the HSC pool in vivo. In the current study, we found that suppression of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, an established nutrient sensor, combined with activation of canonical Wnt/ß-catenin signaling, allows the ex vivo maintenance of human and mouse long-term HSCs under cytokine-free conditions. We also show that combining two clinically approved medications that activate Wnt/ß-catenin signaling and inhibit mTOR increases the number of long-term HSCs in vivo. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Blood ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 1460-1462 ◽  
Author(s):  
ME Pietrzyk ◽  
GV Priestley ◽  
NS Wolf

It was found in a long-term bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) infusion study that two or more different subpopulations of bone marrow stem cells exist in mice. One of these subpopulations appears to be noncycling and forms approximately 10% of eight-day CFU-S. Another one, a subpopulation of slowly cycling bone marrow cells, is represented as 14- day CFU-S. The 14-day CFU-S have a regular increment in the percentage of the subpopulation entering the cycle over time, with a cell generation half-time of 21 days. The cycling status in these experiments was ascertained by in vivo continuous long-term BrdU infusion. An improved method is presented for long-term BrdU infusion with UV killing of cycled cells.


Blood ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 1748-1755 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bryder ◽  
Sten E. W. Jacobsen

Abstract Although long-term repopulating hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) can self-renew and expand extensively in vivo, most efforts at expanding HSC in vitro have proved unsuccessful and have frequently resulted in compromised rather than improved HSC grafts. This has triggered the search for the optimal combination of cytokines for HSC expansion. Through such studies, c-kit ligand (KL), flt3 ligand (FL), thrombopoietin, and IL-11 have emerged as likely positive regulators of HSC self-renewal. In contrast, numerous studies have implicated a unique and potent negative regulatory role of IL-3, suggesting perhaps distinct regulation of HSC fate by different cytokines. However, the interpretations of these findings are complicated by the fact that different cytokines might target distinct subpopulations within the HSC compartment and by the lack of evidence for HSC undergoing self-renewal. Here, in the presence of KL+FL+megakaryocyte growth and development factor (MGDF), which recruits virtually all Lin−Sca-1+kit+ bone marrow cells into proliferation and promotes their self-renewal under serum-free conditions, IL-3 and IL-11 revealed an indistinguishable ability to further enhance proliferation. Surprisingly, and similar to IL-11, IL-3 supported KL+FL+MGDF-induced expansion of multilineage, long-term reconstituting activity in primary and secondary recipients. Furthermore, high-resolution cell division tracking demonstrated that all HSC underwent a minimum of 5 cell divisions, suggesting that long-term repopulating HSC are not compromised by IL-3 stimulation after multiple cell divisions. In striking contrast, the ex vivo expansion of murine HSC in fetal calf serum-containing medium resulted in extensive loss of reconstituting activity, an effect further facilitated by the presence of IL-3.


Blood ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 446-446
Author(s):  
Alejo E Rodriguez-Fraticelli ◽  
Caleb S Weinreb ◽  
Allon Moshe Klein ◽  
Shou-Wen Wang ◽  
Fernando D Camargo

Blood regeneration upon transplantation relies on the activity of long-term repopulating hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs). One of the major controversies in hematopoiesis relates to the apparently different properties that HSCs have in transplantation versus unperturbed settings. In unperturbed steady state hematopoiesis, the most potent HSCs appear to be mostly dormant, and only producing platelet-lineage cells. In turn, upon transplant, even a single transplanted HSC can actively divide and regenerate hundreds of millions of blood progenitors of all lineages. It would thus appear that HSCs have different fundamental properties in each study system. However, most transplantation studies have only tracked the lineage output of the transplanted HSC clones, and rarely the regeneration of the HSC compartment itself. In addition, clonal assays have not been performed at sufficient resolution to fully capture the diversity and clonal complexity of the regenerated HSC compartment. Here, we have used expressible barcodes, which can be sequenced in conventional single cell RNAseq assays, to simultaneously record the functional outcomes and transcriptional states of thousands of HSCs. Our analysis revealed multiple clonal HSC behaviors following transplantation that drastically differ in their differentiation activity, lineage-bias and self-renewal. Surprisingly, we witnessed a large fraction of clones that efficiently repopulate the HSC compartment but show limited contribution to differentiated progeny. Furthermore, these inactive clones have increased competitive multilineage serial repopulating capacity, implying that shortly after transplant a subset of clones reestablishes the native-like LT-HSC behaviors. Our results also argue that this clonal distribution of labor is controlled by cell autonomous, heritable properties (i.e. the epigenetic cell state). Then, using only our clonal readouts to segregate single HSC transcriptomes, we unveiled the transcriptional signatures that associated with unique HSC outcomes (platelet bias, clonal expansion, dormancy, etc.) and unraveled, for the first time, a gene signature for functional long-term serially repopulating clones. We interrogated the drivers of this cell state using an in vivo inducible CRISPR screening and identified 5 novel regulators that are required to regenerate the HSC compartment in a cell autonomous fashion. In conclusion, we demonstrate that functional LT-HSCs share more similar properties in native and transplantation hematopoiesis than previously expected. Consequently, we unveil a definition of the essential, common functional properties of HSCs and the molecular programs that control them. Figure 1 Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Blood ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 104 (11) ◽  
pp. 156-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Lin ◽  
Perrin Cheung ◽  
David L. Wilson ◽  
Stanton L. Gerson

Abstract While hematopoietic engraftment kinetics are well appreciated after lethal irradiation in the mouse, most observations have been limited to blood samples or terminal examination of marrow or spleen. The development of non-invasive bioluminescence in vivo imaging technology allows a dynamic picture of engraftment and clonal expansion to be defined. We have extended this technology to the process of drug resistance gene therapy. We hypothesized that drug selection would profoundly affect the extent and dynamics of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) engraftment and clonal expansion after lentiviral mediated gene transfer of the P140KMGMT gene into murine HSC. In previous studies, we have shown that P140KMGMT gene containing retroviral and lentiviral transduced bone marrow cells provided significant protection against chemotherapeutic drugs BCNU and TMZ given with BG (O6-Benzylguanine), in vitro and in vivo. We generated a bicistronic lentiviral vector containing P140KMGMT gene and firefly luciferase gene linked by 2A sequence of FMDV(Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus), which will cleave itself during ribosomal translation. Whole bone marrow cells was collected from BALB/c mice 4 days after 5-FU treatment and transduced with P140KMGMT-luc lentiviruses at MOI of 1.4. Transduced bone marrow cells were transplanted into lethally irradiated or non-myeloablated syngeneic recipient mice at different cell numbers. Initial bioluminescent signal emerged 6–8 days after transplantation in both lethally irradiated and non-myeloablated recipients. The onset of bioluminescent foci after transplantation occurred in a cell dose dependent manner. The initial signal emitted predominantly from bone marrow, especially femurs, humeri and vertebrae during the early stage of clonal expansion. Intense signal appeared in spleen at days 12–14 and became weaker or even disappeared by days 20–28. Clonal expansion and engraftment greatly increased after a single course of BG+TMZ treatment and initiated strong hematopoiesis in non-myeloablated recipients. Total body bioluminescence intensity of drug treated mice increased 24 fold and 7 fold compared to non-treated mice in both non-myeloablated and lethally irradiated recipients, respectively. A transient phase suggesting migration through the lymphatic system and in the spleen occurred in most mice and was exacerbated by drug selection, but this was less clear in lethally irradiated mice, where engraftment was more confined to the marrow spaces. Bioluminescence in vivo imaging reveals active migration between the bone marrow and the spleen during hematopoiesis. Drug selection has a significant impact on the patterns of engraftment and clonal expansion of HSC and progenitor cells after transplantation.


Blood ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 112 (11) ◽  
pp. 614-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiming Xu ◽  
Hartmut Geiger ◽  
Kathleen Szczur ◽  
Deidra Deira ◽  
Yi Zheng ◽  
...  

Abstract Hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) engraftment is a multistep process involving HSC homing to bone marrow (BM), self-renewal, proliferation and differentiation to mature blood cells. However, the molecular regulation of HSC engraftment is still poorly defined. Small Rho GTPases are critical regulator of cell migration, proliferation and differentiation in multiple cell types. While their role in HSC functions has begun to be understood, the role of their regulator in vivo has been understudied. P190-B GTPase Activating Protein (GAP), a negative regulator of Rho activity, has been implicated in regulating cell size and adipogenesis-myogenesis cell fate determination during fetal development (Sordella, Dev Cell, 2002; Cell 2003). Here, we investigated the role of p190-B in HSC/P engraftment. Since mice lacking p190-B die before birth, serial competitive repopulation assay was performed using fetal liver (FL) tissues from day E14.5 WT and p190-B−/− embryos. WT and p190-B−/− FL cells exhibited similar levels of engraftment in primary recipients. However, the level of contribution of p190-B−/− cells to peripheral blood and bone marrow was maintained between the primary and secondary recipients and still easily detectable in tertiary recipients, while the level of contribution of FL WT cells dramatically decreased with successive serial transplantion and was barely detectable in tertiary recipients. The contribution to T cell, B cell and myeloid cell reconstitution was similar between the genotypes. A pool of HSC was maintained in serially transplanted p190-B−/− animals, since LinnegScaposKitpos (LSK) cells were still present in the BM of p190-B−/− secondary engrafted mice while this population disappeared in WT controls. Importantly, this enhanced long term engraftment was due to a difference in the functional capacity of p190-B−/− HSC compared to WT HSC since highly enriched p190-B−/− HSC (LSK) demonstrated similar enhanced serial transplantation potential. Because previous studies have suggested that the loss of long term function of HSC during serial transplantation can depend, at least in part, on the upregulation of the cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor p16Ink4a (Ito et al, Nat Med 2006), the expression of p16Ink4a was examined during serial transplantation. While expression of p16Ink4a increased in WT HSC in primary and secondary recipients, p16Ink4a remained low in p190-B−/− HSC, which indicated that p190-B-deficiency represses the upregulation of p16Ink4a in HSC in primary and secondary transplant recipients. This provides a possible mechanism of p190-B-mediated HSC functions. We next examined whether p190-B-deficiency may preserve the repopulating capacity of HSC/P during ex vivo cytokine-induced culture. While freshly isolated LSK cells from WT and p190-B−/− mice exhibited comparable intrinsic clonogenic capacity, the frequency of colony-forming unit after 7 days in culture was 2 fold-higher in p190-B−/− compared with WT cultures, resulting in a net CFU expansion. Furthermore, competitive repopulation assays showed significantly higher repopulating activity in mice that received p190-B−/− cultured cells compared with WT cells equivalent to a 4.4-fold increase in the estimated frequency of repopulating units. Interestingly, p190-deficiency did not alter cell cycling rate or survival both in vivo and in vitro. Therefore, p190-B-deficiency maintains key HSC functions either in vivo or in ex vivo culture without altering cycling rate and survival of these cells. These findings define p190-B as a critical regulator of HSC functions regulating self renewal activity while maintaining a balance between proliferation and differentiation.


Blood ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 114 (22) ◽  
pp. 3980-3980 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Oancea ◽  
Brigitte Rüster ◽  
Jessica Roos ◽  
Afsar Ali Mian ◽  
Tatjana Micheilis ◽  
...  

Abstract Abstract 3980 Poster Board III-916 Stem cells have been shown to play an important role in the pathogenesis and maintenance of a significant number of malignancies, including leukemias. Similar to normal hematopoiesis the AML cell population is thought to be hierarchically organized. According to this model, only a few stem cells (LSC) are able to initiate and maintain the disease. The inefficient targeting of the leukemic stem cells (LSC) is considered responsible for relapse after the induction of complete hematologic remission (CR) in AML. Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is a subtype of AML characterized by the t(15;17) translocation and expression of the PML/RARα fusion protein. Treatment of APL with all-trans retinoic acid (t-RA) as monotherapy induces CR, but not molecular remission (CMR), followed by relapse within a few months. In contrast arsenic as monotherapy induces high rates of CR and CMR followed by a long relapse-free survival. We recently have shown that in contrast to t-RA, arsenic efficiently targets PML/RAR-positive stem cells, whereas t-RA increases their proliferation. For a better characterization of LSC in APL which has to be targeted for an efficient eradication of the disease we wanted to characterize the leukemia-initiating cell and the cell population able to maintain the disease in vivo. The model was based on a classical transduction/transplantation system of murine Sca1+/lin- HSC combined with a novel approach for the enrichment of transformed cells with long-term stem cell properties. We found that PML/RAR induced leukemia from the Sca1+/lin- HSC with a frequency of 40% and a long latency of 8-12 months independently of its capacity to increase dramatically replating efficiency and CFU-S12 potential as expression of the differentiation block and proliferation potential of derived committed progenitors. Based on the hypothesis that PML/RAR exerts its leukemogenic effects on only a small proportion of the Sca1+1/lin- population, we proceeded to select and to amplify rare PML/RAR-positive cells with the leukemia-initiating potential, by a negative selection of cell populations with proliferation potential without long term stem cell-capacity (LT). Therefore we expressed PML/RAR in Sca1+/lin- cells and enriched this population for LT- (lin-/Sca1+/c-Kit+/Flk2-) and ST-HSC (lin-/Sca1+/c-Kit+/Flk2+). After a passage first in semi-solid medium for 7 days and subsequent transplantation into lethally irradiated mice, cells from the ensuing CFU-S day12 were again transplanted into sublethally recipient mice. After 12 to 36 weeks, 6/6 mice developed acute myeloid leukemia without signs of differentiation in the group transplanted with the lin-/Sca1+/c-Kit+/Flk2- population but not from that transplanted with lin-/Sca1+/c-Kit+/Flk2+ cells. This leukemia was efficiently transplanted into secondary recipients. The primary leukemic cell population gave origin to 6 clearly distinct subpopulations defined by surface marker pattern as an expression of populations with distinct differentiation status, able - after sorting - to give leukemia in sublethally irradiated recipients: Sca1+/c-Kit+/CD34- (LT-HSC), Sca1+/c-Kit+/CD34+ (ST-HSC), Sca1-/c-Kit+, B220lo/GR1+/Mac1+, B220hi/GR1+/Mac1+, B220-/Gr1-/Mac1-. Interestingly, all leukemias from the different population presented an identical phenotype. These findings strongly suggest that there is a difference between a leukemia-initiating (L-IC) and leukemia-maintaining (L-MC) cell population in the murine PML/RAR leukemia model. In contrast to the L-IC, represented by a very rare subpopulation of primitive HSC, recalling a hierarchical stem cell model, the L-MC is represented by a larger cell population with a certain grade of phenotypical heterogeneity, but a high grade of functional homogeneity recalling a stochastic cancer induction model. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Blood ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 126 (23) ◽  
pp. 242-242
Author(s):  
Jennifer E Adair ◽  
Lauren E Schefter ◽  
Daniel R Humphrys ◽  
Kevin G Haworth ◽  
Jonah D Hocum ◽  
...  

Abstract Long-term clonal tracking studies utilizing hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) in nonhuman primates receiving myeloablative transplantation demonstrate a successive pattern of repopulation: short-term repopulating cells are succeeded by long-term clones. However, the duration of short-term repopulation and the numbers of clones contributing to either short or long-term repopulation are unclear. Here, we tracked >11,000 unique clones in 8 pigtail macaques for up to 9 years following myeloablative transplantation with autologous, lentivirus gene-modified CD34+ HSPCs. Seven of these animals received cells expressing the P140K mutant methylguanine methyltransferase transgene, which is resistant to the combination of O6-benzylguanine (O6BG) and bis-chloroethylnitrosourea (BCNU) chemotherapy, thus conferring a selective advantage to gene-modified cells in vivo. After transplantation and before in vivo selection with O6BG/BCNU, we observed a successive pattern of hematopoietic reconstitution, with short-term clones declining within 100 days after transplantation. Within the first year after transplant, the percent of persistent clones varied from animal-to-animal, ranging from 8% to 54% of clones detected at a >1% frequency, and remained stable in the absence of selective pressure. Importantly, when animals engrafted with P140K-expressing cells were administered O6BG/BCNU we observed novel clonal patterns, which directly correlated with transplanted cell dose and time of chemotherapy administration after transplant. In all animals, chemotherapy induced emergence of previously undetected clones. In animals receiving ≤12x106 CD34+ cells/kg at the time of transplant (n = 4), chemotherapy also induced a re-emergence of previously declined short-term repopulating clones or a stabilization (i.e. decreased fluctuation) of repopulating clones identified between 100 days and 1 year after transplant. However, in animals receiving robust cell doses, ≥35x106 CD34+ cells/kg (n = 2), chemotherapy more than 1 year after transplant induced a completely novel clonal repertoire. In one animal receiving 22x106 CD34+ cells/kg at transplant, chemotherapy administration beginning <1 year (253 days) after transplant induced clonal stability, which was maintained through two additional chemotherapy treatments. These data suggest that some short-term repopulating clones may have long-term repopulation ability, but revert to a dormant phase within the first year after transplant. Additionally, these data indicate that transplant of excess repopulating cells results in early dormancy of a large proportion of repopulating clones. Together, these findings suggest that previous estimates of HSPC frequency based on clone tracking are an underestimate of true graft repopulation potential. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Blood ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 1748-1755 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bryder ◽  
Sten E. W. Jacobsen

Although long-term repopulating hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) can self-renew and expand extensively in vivo, most efforts at expanding HSC in vitro have proved unsuccessful and have frequently resulted in compromised rather than improved HSC grafts. This has triggered the search for the optimal combination of cytokines for HSC expansion. Through such studies, c-kit ligand (KL), flt3 ligand (FL), thrombopoietin, and IL-11 have emerged as likely positive regulators of HSC self-renewal. In contrast, numerous studies have implicated a unique and potent negative regulatory role of IL-3, suggesting perhaps distinct regulation of HSC fate by different cytokines. However, the interpretations of these findings are complicated by the fact that different cytokines might target distinct subpopulations within the HSC compartment and by the lack of evidence for HSC undergoing self-renewal. Here, in the presence of KL+FL+megakaryocyte growth and development factor (MGDF), which recruits virtually all Lin−Sca-1+kit+ bone marrow cells into proliferation and promotes their self-renewal under serum-free conditions, IL-3 and IL-11 revealed an indistinguishable ability to further enhance proliferation. Surprisingly, and similar to IL-11, IL-3 supported KL+FL+MGDF-induced expansion of multilineage, long-term reconstituting activity in primary and secondary recipients. Furthermore, high-resolution cell division tracking demonstrated that all HSC underwent a minimum of 5 cell divisions, suggesting that long-term repopulating HSC are not compromised by IL-3 stimulation after multiple cell divisions. In striking contrast, the ex vivo expansion of murine HSC in fetal calf serum-containing medium resulted in extensive loss of reconstituting activity, an effect further facilitated by the presence of IL-3.


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