Detection of a Stem Cell Population with Hemangioblastic Characteristics in Primary Myelofibrosis (PMF),

Abstract 3860

Primary myelofibrosis (PMF) comprises a myeloproliferative neoplasia accompanied by imbalance of various tissues of the mesoderm, let alone the hematopoietic tissue. Involvement of multiple hematopoietic lineages during disease progression suggests the clonality of myelofibrosis that can be attributed to an initial stem cell defect at the very early stage of the stem cell hierarchy. Hematopoietic and endothelial phenotypes of circulating multipotent stem cells in patient peripheral blood, along with the increased microvascular density in the bone marrow, leads to the hypothesis that the critical event in PMF involves malignant transformation of a stem cell with hemangioblastic potential.

Former studies have provided functional evidence that activated JAK2 signalling in primitive human hematopoietic cells is sufficient to drive key processes involved in the pathogenesis of the disease. In this study, the functionality and differentiation potential of circulating primitive JAK2V617F+ stem cells from primary myelofibrosis patients is assessed.

Primitive stem cells were isolated from peripheral blood of 25 patients. All patients participating in the study were diagnosed with primary myelofibrosis, have been untreated, and were found positive for JAK2V617F mutation. Isolated stem cells were analysed for purity and assessed for the expression of markers characteristic for the hemangioblast phenotype (CD34, CD133, CD45, VEGFR2, VE-Cadherin, E-Cadherin, CD31) with flow cytometry. Genomic DNA was isolated from various stem cell populations to determine the mutational status by PCR. Our results indicate that long term repopulating stem cells circulating in peripheral blood bear the JAK2V617F mutation. Hemangioblast resembling populations within the isolated prime stem cells were also found positive for the mutation. Long term repopulating stem cells bearing different allele burden for JAK2V617F mutation from PMF patient peripheral blood were expanded for up to 4 months. Various colonies formed after seeding in semisolid media were characterised by morphological features (CFU-GEMM, CFU-GM, CFU-E, CFU-M, CFU-Endo) and expressing genes by quantitative PCR. Moreover, allele burden determination for various progenitors of both hematopoietic and endothelial lineages was performed. JAK2V617F allele burden varied within individual progeny phenotypes, indicating the acquisition of the mutation that boosts the outgrowth of the malignant clone within the hemangioblast compartment of the bone marrow. Endothelial and macrophage progenitors appear heterozygotic while all rest progenitors of various hematopoietic lineages can be either heterozygotic or homozygotic. This indicates high genomic instability of the JAK2V617F+ malignant clone as it is driven into hematopoietic differentiation.

Our results indicate the existence of a malignant clone with hemangioblast phenotype in PMF which can differentiate into hematopoietic and/or endothelial progenitors in vitro. Our experiments shed light to the pathogenesis of PMF by characterising the potential of the defective stem cell subpopulation responsible for the disease.