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The mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) protein is an epigenetic transcriptional regulator that controls proliferative expansion of immature hematopoietic progenitors, whose aberrant activation triggers leukemogenesis. A mature MLL protein is produced by formation of an intra-molecular complex and proteolytic cleavage. However the biological significance of these two post-transcriptional events remains unclear. To address their in vivo roles, mouse mutant alleles were created that exclusively express either a variant protein incapable of intra-molecular interaction (designated de) or an uncleavable mutant protein (designated uc). The de homozygous mice died during midgestation and manifested devastating failure in embryonic development and reduced numbers of hematopoietic progenitors, whereas uc homozygous mice displayed no apparent defects. Expression of MLL target genes was severely impaired in de homozygous fibroblasts but unaffected in uc homozygous fibroblasts. These results unequivocally demonstrate that intra-molecular complex formation is a crucial maturation step whereas proteolytic cleavage is dispensable for MLL-dependent gene activation and proliferation in vivo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capacity of the hematopoietic system to promptly respond to peripheral demands relies on adequate pools of progenitors able to transiently proliferate and differentiate in a regulated manner. However, little is known about factors that may restrain progenitor maturation to maintain their reservoirs. Conditional knockout mice for the Pbx1 proto-oncogene have a significant reduction in lineagerestricted progenitors in addition to a profound defect in hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) self-renewal. Through analysis of purified progenitor proliferation, differentiation capacity and transcriptional profiling, we demonstrate that Pbx1 regulates the lineage-specific output of multipotent and oligopotent progenitors. In the absence of Pbx1 multipotent progenitor (MPP) and common myeloid progenitor (CMP) pools are reduced due to aberrantly rapid myeloid maturation. This is associated with premature expression of myeloid differentiation genes and decreased maintenance of proto-oncogene transcriptional pathways, including reduced expression of Meis1, a Pbx1 dimerization partner, and its subordinate transcriptional program. Conversely, Pbx1 maintains the lymphoid differentiation potential of lymphoid-primed MPPs (LMPPs) and common lymphoid progenitors (CLPs), whose reduction in the absence of Pbx1 is associated with a defect in lymphoid priming that is also present in CMPs, which persistently express lymphoid and HSC genes underlying a previously unappreciated lineage promiscuity that is maintained by Pbx1. These results demonstrate a role for Pbx1 in restraining myeloid maturation while maintaining lymphoid potential to appropriately regulate progenitor reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tumor cell contamination of the apheresis in multiple myeloma is likely to affect disease-free and overall survival after autografting. Objective: To purge myeloma aphereses from tumor contaminants with a novel culture-based purging method. Methods: We cultured myeloma-positive CD34+ PB samples in conditions that retained multipotency of hematopoietic stem cells, but were unfavourable to survival of plasma cells. Moreover, we exploited the resistance of myeloma plasma cells to retroviral transduction by targeting the hematopoietic CD34+ cell population with a retroviral vector carrying a selectable marker (the truncated form of the human receptor for nerve growth factor, ΔNGFR). We performed therefore a further myeloma purging step by selecting the transduced cells at the end of the culture. Results: Overall recovery of CD34+ cells after culture was 128.5%; ΔNGFR transduction rate was 28.8% for CD34+ cells and 0% for CD138-selected primary myeloma cells, respectively. Recovery of CD34+ cells after ΔNGFR selection was 22.3%. By patient-specific Ig-gene rearrangements, we assessed a decrease of 0.7-1.4 logs in tumor load after the CD34+ cell selection, and up to 2.3 logs after culture and ΔNGFR selection. Conclusion: We conclude that ex-vivo culture and retroviral-mediated transduction of myeloma leukaphereses provide an efficient tumor cell purging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]