Stability of Self-Renewal in Hematopoietic Stem Cells

Abstract SCI-42

For many years a distinction was drawn between prospectively separable murine HSC populations with long-term, essentially permanent reconstituting potential (LT-HSC), versus HSC populations yielding short-term engraftment lasting only 4 – 6 weeks after transplantation (ST-HSC). Recent work based on transplantation of single cells shows that highly purified populations of LT-HSC prepared by standard sorting parameters consist in fact predominantly of a distinct, newly recognized class of intermediate- term reconstituting cells (IT-HSC) whose grafts endure longer than short-term HSC but also eventually fail (1). IT-HSC are separable from long-term reconstituting cells on the basis of expression of more alpha2 integrin and less SLAM150. Crucial to recognition of the distinction between LT- and IT-HSC are the endpoints used to evaluate reconstitution. If blood erythroid or myeloid reconstitution is measured, IT reconstitution is readily distinguished by the disappearance of these elements by 16 wk post-transplant. If instead reconstitution is measured simply by presence of blood leukocytes of donor origin, which in the mouse are almost entirely lymphocytes, the distinction is not made because lymphoid elements persist even in fading IT clones to 24 wk or beyond. The observations imply a need for reinterpretation of most of the published descriptions of the biology and gene expression profiles previously attributed to LT-HSC but in fact derived from analysis of populations that consisted mainly of IT-HSC. The capacity now to separate LT- from IT-HSC creates new opportunities for probing the mechanisms that specify and sustain long term function in the former but not the latter. 1. Benveniste P, Frelin C, Janmohamed S, Barbara M, Herrington R, Hyam D, Iscove NN. Intermediate-term hematopoietic stem cells with extended but time-limited reconstitution potential. Cell Stem Cell. 2010;6:48–58