Ex vivo culture of human cord blood hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells adversely influences their distribution to other bone marrow compartments after intra-bone marrow transplantation.

Intra-bone marrow injection is a novel strategy for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Here, we investigated whether ex vivo culture of cord blood hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells influences their reconstitution in bone marrow after intra-bone marrow transplantation. Freshly isolated AC133(+) cells or cells derived from AC133(+) cells cultured with cytokines (stem cell factor, flt-3 ligand, and thrombopoietin) for 5 days were injected into the bone marrow of the left tibia in irradiated NOD/SCID mice. In the bone marrow of the injected left tibia, the engraftment levels of human CD45(+) cells at 6 weeks after transplantation did not differ considerably between transplantation of noncultured and cytokine-cultured cells. However, the migration and distribution of transplanted cells to the bone marrow of other, noninjected bones were extremely reduced for cytokine-treated cells compared with noncultured cells. Similar findings were observed for engraftment of CD34(+) cells. Administration of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor to mice after transplantation induced the migration of cytokine-cultured cells to the bone marrow of previously aspirated bone but not to other intact bones. These data suggest that ex vivo manipulation of hematopoietic progenitor/stem cells significantly affects their migration properties to other bone marrow compartments after intra-bone marrow transplantation. Our data raise a caution for future clinical applications of the intra-bone marrow transplantation method using ex vivo-manipulated hematopoietic stem cells.