Morphological and molecular characterization of novel population of CXCR4+ SSEA-4+ Oct-4+ very small embryonic-like cells purified from human cord blood -: Preliminary report

Recently, we purified from adult murine bone marrow ( BM) a population of CXCR4(+), Oct-4(+) SSEA-1+, Sca-1(+) lin(-) CD45(-) very small embryonic-like (VSEL) stem cells and hypothesized that similar cells could be also present in human cord blood ( CB). Here, we report that by employing a novel two-step isolation procedure-removal of erythrocytes by hypotonic lysis combined with multiparameter sorting-we could isolate from CB a population of human cells that are similar to murine BM-derived VSELs, described previously by us. These CB-isolated VSELs (CB-VSEL)are very small (3-5 mu m) and highly enriched in a population of CXCR4(+) AC133(+) CD34(+) lin(-) CD45(-) CB mononuclear cells, possess large nuclei containing unorganized euchromatin and express nuclear embryonic transcription factors Oct-4 and Nanog and surface embryonic antigen SSEA-4. Further studies are needed to see if human CB-isolated VSELs similar to their murine BM-derived counterparts are endowed with pluripotent stem cell properties.