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Blood, 15 April 2006, Vol. 107, No. 8, pp. 3371-3377. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on January 3, 2006; DOI 10.1182/blood-2005-08-3108.
Submitted August 3, 2005
Research Center for Regenerative Medicine, Tokai University, School of Medicine, Isehara, Kanagawa, Japan; Department of Hematology, Tokai University, School of Medicine, Isehara, Kanagawa, Japan * Corresponding author; email: andok{at}keyaki.cc.u-tokai.ac.jp.
To characterize human hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), xenotransplantation techniques such as the severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mouse repopulating cell (SRC) assay have proven the most reliable methods thus far. While SRC quantification by limiting dilution analysis (LDA) is the gold standard for measuring in vitro expansion of human HSC, LDA is a statistical method and does not directly establish that a single HSC has self renewed in vitro. This would require a direct clonal method and has not been done. By using lentiviral gene-marking and direct intra-bone marrow injection of cultured CD34+ CB cells, we demonstrate here the first direct evidence for self-renewal of individual SRC clones in vitro. Of 74 clones analyzed, 20 clones (27%) divided and repopulated in more than two mice after serum-free and stroma-dependent culture. Some of them were secondary transplantable. This indicates symmetric self-renewal divisions in vitro. On the other hand, 54 clones (73%) present only in one mouse may result from asymmetric divisions in vitro. Our data demonstrate that current ex vivo expansion conditions result in reliable stem cell expansion and the clonal tracking we have employed is the only reliable method that can be used in the development of clinically appropriate expansion methods.
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