Stem cell proliferation induced by potent cytokines usually leads to a loss of primitive potential through differentiation. In this study, the ability of cytokines and murine MS5 stromal cells to independently regulate the proliferation and longterm culture-initiating cell (LTC-IC) activity of primitive CD34 ؉ CD38 low/neg human bone marrow cells was evaluated. To compare populations with identical proliferation histories, cells were labeled with carboxy fluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester, and LTC-IC activity was as-
IntroductionThe loss of stem cell activity that invariably occurs when primitive cells are induced to divide by cytokines compromises attempts to obtain a net increase in the number of stem cells for therapeutic purposes in transplantation or gene transfer with murine retroviral vectors. What can be demonstrated is an amplification of cells retaining similar functional properties, such as the ability to reconstitute long-term culture (LTC) in vitro 1 or nonobese diabeticsevere combined immunodeficient (NOD-SCID) recipients in vivo. 2,3 However, this is by no means proof of self-renewal because the molecular identities of daughter and parent cells cannot be demonstrated in the absence of known genetic mechanisms that control self-renewal versus differentiation. Thus, net increases in the number of long-term culture-initiating cell, (LTC-IC), human NOD-SCID-reconstituting cells (rc), and, more rarely, murine long-term repopulating cells 4 have been described after a shortterm exposure to cytokines, but usually the expansion does not exceed a factor of 10, and the low frequency of proliferating cells participating in the expansion of the stem cell compartment also complicates evaluation of quantitative analyses of these responses.Although stromal cells have been assigned contradictory functions, they have often been viewed as important for the maintenance of primitive progenitor activity, 5 particularly in the lymphoid lineages. 6 Coculture with stromal cells is the basis of the LTC system. However, now that many purified cytokines are available, several groups have demonstrated an additional ability of stromal feeders to maintain primitive hematopoietic cell function in cultures used for expansion [7][8][9] or gene transfer protocols. 10 The contribution of cytokines, adhesion molecules, 11 and other stromaderived regulators, such as Notch ligands, 12 in these effects has been reported, though it is unclear whether stromal cells act by affecting cell survival 13 or by promoting or delaying cell-cycle entry. 14 One helpful strategy to monitor variations in cell proliferation in these conditions has been to label the cells with fluorescent dyes such as PKH-2, PKH-26, 15 or more recently carboxy fluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester (CFSE). [16][17][18][19] Because these dyes are diluted by cell division, they can be used to track the proliferative behavior of cells in vitro and are thus useful to correlate changes in cell function with successive cell divisions. This approach has been used rec...