Blood, 15 May 2001, Vol. 97, No. 10, pp. 3069-3074
HEMATOPOIESIS
Natural killer cell-dependent apoptosis of peripheral murine
hematopoietic progenitor cells in response to Fas cross-linking:
involvement of tumor necrosis factor-
Géraldine Moreau,
Maria Leite-de-Moraes,
Sophie Ezine,
James P. Di
Santo,
Michel Dy, and
Elke Schneider
From CNRS UMR 8603, Université René
Descartes
Paris V, Hôpital Necker; INSERM U345; and Institut
Pasteur, Paris, France.
Recently, a marked extramedullary myelopoiesis in Fas/CD95- or
FasL/CD95L-deficient mice has been reported. In the present in vitro
study, the mechanisms underlying Fas-induced apoptosis of normal
peripheral colony-forming unit-C (CFU-C) progenitors in the spleen were
analyzed. Surprisingly, it was found that clonogenic progenitors were
protected from
IFN plus Fas-induced programmed cell death when
Lin+ cells were removed from cultured splenocytes. The
cells that rendered CFU-C sensitive to the activation of the Fas
pathway did not belong to the T or the myelocytic-monocytic lineage
but comprised a non-B-cell subset expressing the activation marker B220. Among CD19
B220+ splenocytes, nearly
half were natural killer (NK) 1.1+ cells whose in vivo
depletion or deficiency in RAG2-
c
/
mice
abrogated the effect of Fas cross-linking. NK cells exerted their
accessory function, at least in part, through tumor necrosis factor-
(TNF-
), which they readily produced during pretreatment with the anti-Fas/CD95 monoclonal antibody and IFN-
and whose addition could compensate for the loss of sensitivity. In conclusion, this study provides evidence that peripheral clonogenic progenitors are
not directly responsive to Fas cross-linking, even in the presence of
IFN-
, but require NK cells as a source of TNF-
to make them
susceptible to this death pathway.