Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) Treatment Rapidly Increases the Fraction of Non-Dividing Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs)

HSCs are pluripotent cells responsible for the establishment and renewal of the entire hematopoietic system. Our group and others have established that osteoblastic cells in the bone marrow microenvironment regulate HSC cell fate decisions. Specifically, Parathyroid hormone (PTH) expands HSCs by activating osteoblasts in the HSC niche. However, the molecular mechanisms for this increase are unknown. PTH increases local production of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in osteoblasts by stimulating cyclo-oxygenase 2 (Cox-2). We also recently found that treatment of osteoblastic MC3T3 cells with PTH (10⁻⁷ M) rapidly induces PGE2 Synthase expression. Therefore, we hypothesized that PGE2 may act as a mediator of the PTH effect on HSCs. We have shown that in vivo PGE2 treatment caused a 2.75-fold increase in lineage⁻ Sca-1⁺ c-kit⁺ (LSK) cells within the bone marrow compared with vehicle treated mice (p=0.0061, n=8/group). Bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMMC) from mice treated with PGE2 also demonstrated superior lymphomyeloid reconstitution in competitive repopulation analyses, suggesting that HSCs are being expanded or modulated to more efficiently reconstitute the hematopoietic system in the recipients. It is known that HSCs that reside in the G₀ phase of the cell cycle have increased ability to reconstitute myeloablated recipient mice. Since PGE2 treatment resulted in superior reconstitution, we hypothesized that PGE2 may increase the percentage of HSCs residing in G⁰. To test this hypothesis, we treated BMMC from male C57b/6 mice with 10⁻⁶ M PGE2 or vehicle for 90 minutes. The percentage of cells in G₀ vs. G₁ was determined by flow-cytometric analysis using the RNA and DNA dyes, Pyronin-Y and Hoechst 33342 respectively. As we predicted, PGE2 treatment increased the percentage of wild-type LSK cells in G₀ 1.85 fold over vehicle-treated LSK cells (23.63% in vehicle-treated, n=4 vs. 43.7% in PGE2-treated, n=6). Since the PTH-dependent increase in HSCs is Protein Kinase A (PKA) mediated and the PGE2 receptors EP2 and EP4 signal via PKA, we assayed the effect of PGE2 on the percentage of cells in G₀ in mice lacking the EP2 receptor (EP2^−/− mice). Interestingly, there was no enrichment for HSC in G₀ when BMMC from EP2^−/− mice were treated with PGE2 (55.25% in vehicle-treated, n=4 vs. 56.06% in PGE2-treated, n=5). These findings suggest that PGE2-dependent regulation of HSC activity may involve increasing the percentage of HSCs that reside in G₀ by activation of EP2, thereby augmenting their ability to reconstitute the hematopoietic system of a myeloablated recipient. 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation was also used to investigate the effect of PGE2 on cell cycling of HSCs. Male 6–8 week old C57b/6 mice were injected intraperitoneally with 1 mg BrdU and PGE2 (6 mg/kg) or vehicle. After 30, 60, 90 or 120 minutes, mice were sacrificed and BMMC were subjected to flow cytometric analysis for incorporation of BrdU and DNA content in HSCs. As expected for the highly quiescent HSC population, only a small fraction of HSCs incorporated BrdU. After 30 and 60 minutes of treatment, there was no difference in the percentage of cells that incorporated BrdU between vehicle and PGE2-treated mice. However, at the 90 and 120 minute time points, there were significantly less HSCs cycling in the bone marrow from the PGE2 treated mice (12.1% vs. 5.3% at 90 min, n=2 per group; 11.1% vs. 1.8% at 120 min, n=5 per group, p=0.0060), suggesting that fewer PGE2-treated cells were synthesizing DNA. Taken together, the increase in the percentage of HSCs in G₀ and the decrease in cycling HSCs after PGE2 treatment indicate that PGE2 could improve engraftment and reconstitution of the hematopoietic system by enriching for HSCs in G₀. These results suggest that PGE2 may exert its beneficial effect on bone marrow reconstitution by altering cell cycle dynamics in HSCs. Identification of the molecular events mediating this novel PGE2 action on HSC could provide additional targets for HSC manipulation in clinical situations requiring rapid and efficient bone marrow reconstitution, such as recovery from iatrogenic or pathologic myeloablative injury.