Stromal-Like Environment Critical to Stem Cell Expansion

St. Louis, MO-

It is long been suggested that the appropriate imitation of in vivo microenvironments is critical to successful culture, expansion, and differentiation of stem cells.

In a paper which appeared in the Nov 9 online issue of Blood (Cytokine and integrin stimulation synergize to promote higher levels of GATA-2, c-myb, and CD34 protein in primary human hematopoietic progenitors from bone marrow), Doa et al reported that culturing of human CD34+ stem cells on specific fibronectin fragments enhances ability of the cultured cells to induce hematopoiesis when transplanted to immune compromised mice.

Mechanistically, it appeared that the transcription factors c-myb and GATA-2, which are generally correlated with stem cell proliferation are upregulated on CD34+ cells that are cultured on fibronectin.

This finding conceptually may be used not only for increasing the numbers of CD34+ stem cells for hematopoietic purposes, but also for myocardial regeneration or post-stroke neural recovery.

Use of fibronectin fragments for stem cell expansion is alluded to in US patent # 5668104.