Lee, Soo Hyun, Kim, Dae Seong, Lee, Myoung Woo, Noh, Yoo Hun, Jang, In Keun, Kim, Dong Hyun, Yang, Heung-Mo, Kim, Sung-Joo, Choi, Soo Jin, Oh, Wonil, Yang, Yoon Sun, Chueh, Hee Won, Son, Meong Hi, Jung, Hye Lim, Yoo, Keon Hee, Sung, Ki Woong, and Koo, Hong Hoe
To overcome the limitations of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), we conducted a study to identify a strategy for enhancing hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) engraftment during HSCT. Co-transplantation experiments with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from adult human tissues including bone marrow (BM), adipose tissue (AT), and umbilical cord blood (CB) were conducted. We showed that AT-MSCs and CB-MSCs enhanced the engraftment of HSCs as effectively as BM-MSCs in NOD/SCID mice, suggesting that AT-MSCs and CB-MSCs can be used as alternative stem cell sources for enhancing the engraftment and homing of HSCs. CB-MSCs derived from different donors showed different degrees of efficacy in enhancing the engraftment of HSCs. The most effective CB-MSCs showed higher proliferation rates and secreted more MCP-1, RANTES, EGF, and VEGF. Our results suggest that AT-MSCs and CB-MSCs could be alternative stem cell sources for co-transplantation in HSCT. Furthermore, in terms of MSCs’ heterogeneity, characteristics of each population of MSCs are considerable factors for selecting MSCs suitable for co-transplantation with HSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]