Expansion of blood CD34+ cells: Committed precursor expansion does not affect immature hematopoietic progenitors

The CD34 antigen is present at all differentiation stages of hematopoietic cells, from immature progenitor cells to committed precursor cells. In vivo, transplantation of CD34+ cells is sufficient to allow hematopoietic recovery after myeloablative chemotherapy, but a neutropenic period of 9-12 days still exists, even when hematopoietic growth factors are given posttransplantation. After ex vivo expansion cultures in the presence of cytokines, CD34+ cells can generate mature precursor cells in a stroma-free liquid culture system. This could lead to a shortening of the aplasia duration, but the persistence of primitive progenitor cells in the expanded CD34+ compartment remains to be demonstrated. In this study, CD34+ cells were isolated from eight peripheral blood (PB) and eight cord blood (CB) samples using either Isolex(TM) 50 (n = 6), Ceprate(TM) LC CD34 kit (n = 6), or Microcellector(TM) T-25 Stem Cell kit (n = 4). We have evaluated the functional potential of CD34+ cells after 7 days of ex vivo expansion culture in the presence of 500 UI/ml of interleukin-l (IL-1), 10 ng/ml of IL-3, and 10 ng/ml of stem cell factor (SCF). The expansions of nucleated cells, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)-responsive committed precursors, IL-1 + IL-3 + SCF + erythropoietin (EPO)-responsive multilineage progenitors, and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)-resistant quiescent progenitor were 8-fold, 59-fold, 4.4-fold, and 2.2-fold, respectively. There was no significant difference in the amplification/expansion parameters between cultures initiated with CD34+ cells from PBSC or CB. Our data confirm that cytokine-mediated ex vivo expansion of blood CD34+ cells can produce large numbers of committed precursors and does not significantly affect the compartment containing more immature progenitors. Cytokine-mediated expansion could be of great interest in autologous transplantation to decrease the duration of marrow aplasia.