技术资料

The C-X-C-type chemokine Cxcl12,also known as stromal cell-derived factor-1,plays a critical role in hematopoiesis during fetal development. However,the functional requirement of Cxcl12 in the adult hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell (HSPC) regulation was still unclear. In this report,we developed a murine Cxcl12 conditional deletion model in which the target gene can be deleted at the adult stage. We found that loss of stroma-secreted Cxcl12 in the adult led to expansion of the HSPC population as well as a reduction in long-term quiescent stem cells. In Cxcl12-deficient bone marrow,HSPCs were absent along the endosteal surface,and blood cell regeneration occurred predominantly in the perisinusoidal space after 5-fluorouracil myelosuppression challenge. Our results indicate that Cxcl12 is required for HSPC homeostasis regulation and is an important factor for osteoblastic niche organization in adult stage bone marrow. View Publication

The homeobox gene Hoxa-9 is normally expressed in primitive bone marrow cells,and overexpression of Hoxa-9 markedly expands hematopoietic stem cells,suggesting a function in early hematopoiesis. We present evidence for major functional defects in Hoxa-9-/- hematopoietic stem cells. Hoxa-9-/- marrow cells have normal numbers of immunophenotypic stem cells (Lin(-)c-kit(+)flk-2(-)Sca-1+ [KLFS] cells). However,sublethally irradiated Hoxa-9-/- mice develop persistent pancytopenia,indicating unusual sensitivity to ionizing irradiation. In competitive transplantation assays,Hoxa-9-/- cells showed an 8-fold reduction in multilineage long-term repopulating ability,a defect not seen in marrow cells deficient for the adjacent Hoxa-10 gene. Single-cell cultures of KLFS cells showed a 4-fold reduction in large high-proliferation potential colonies. In liquid cultures,Hoxa-9-deficient Lin(-)Sca-1(+) cells showed slowed proliferation (a 5-fold reduction in cell numbers at day 8) and delayed emergence of committed progenitors (a 5-fold decrease in colony-forming cells). Slowing of proliferation was accompanied by a delay in myeloid maturation,with a decrease in Gr-1hiMac-1hi cells at the end of the culture. Retroviral transduction with a Hoxa-9 expression vector dramatically enhanced the cytokine-driven proliferation and in vivo engraftment of Hoxa-9-/- marrow cells. Hoxa-9 appears to be specifically required for normal hematopoietic stem cell function both in vitro and in vivo. View Publication

Targeted cancer therapies exploit the continued dependence of cancer cells on oncogenic mutations. Such agents can have remarkable activity against some cancers,although antitumor responses are often heterogeneous,and resistance remains a clinical problem. To gain insight into factors that influence the action of a prototypical targeted drug,we studied the action of imatinib (STI-571,Gleevec) against murine cells and leukemias expressing BCR-ABL,an imatinib target and the initiating oncogene for human chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). We show that the tumor suppressor p53 is selectively activated by imatinib in BCR-ABL-expressing cells as a result of BCR-ABL kinase inhibition. Inactivation of p53,which can accompany disease progression in human CML,impedes the response to imatinib in vitro and in vivo without preventing BCR-ABL kinase inhibition. Concordantly,p53 mutations are associated with progression to imatinib resistance in some human CMLs. Our results identify p53 as a determinant of the response to oncogene inhibition and suggest one way in which resistance to targeted therapy can emerge during the course of tumor evolution. View Publication

Hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) engraftment is a multistep process involving HSC homing to bone marrow,self-renewal,proliferation,and differentiation to mature blood cells. Here,we show that loss of p190-B RhoGTPase activating protein,a negative regulator of Rho GTPases,results in enhanced long-term engraftment during serial transplantation. This effect is associated with maintenance of functional HSC-enriched cells. Furthermore,loss of p190-B led to marked improvement of HSC in vivo repopulation capacity during ex vivo culture without altering proliferation and multilineage differentiation of HSC and progeny. Transcriptional analysis revealed that p190-B deficiency represses the up-regulation of p16(Ink4a) in HSCs in primary and secondary transplantation recipients,providing a possible mechanism of p190-B-mediated HSC functions. Our study defines p190-B as a critical transducer element of HSC self-renewal activity and long-term engraftment,thus suggesting that p190-B is a target for HSC-based therapies requiring maintenance of engraftment phenotype. View Publication

Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a subpopulation of tumor cells with preferential tumor-initiating capacity and have been purported to be resistant to chemotherapy. It has been shown that breast CSC are,on average,enriched in patient tumors after combination neoadjuvant chemotherapy including docetaxel,doxorubicin,and cyclophosphamide (CPA). Here,we investigate the resistance of breast CSC to CPA alone in a xenograft model. CPA treatment led to a 48% reduction in tumor volume during a 2-week period. Cells bearing the CD44(+) CD24(-) phenotype were reduced by 90% (2.5% to 0.24%) in CPA-treated tumors,whereas cells with aldehyde dehydrogenase activity were reduced by 64% (4.7% to 1.7%). A subsequent functional analysis showed that CPA-treated tumors were impaired in their ability to form tumors,indicating loss of functional tumor-initiating activity. These results are consistent with a CSC phenotype that is sensitive to CPA and indicate that some patient CSC may not display the expected resistance to therapy. Deciphering the mechanism for this difference may lead to therapies to counteract resistance. View Publication

The lipophilic statin lovastatin decreases cholesterol synthesis and is a safe and effective treatment for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Growing evidence points at antitumor potential of lovastatin. Therefore,understanding the molecular mechanism of lovastatin function in different cell types is critical to effective therapy design. In this study,we investigated the effects of lovastatin on the differentiation potential of human embryonic stem (hES) cells (H9 cell line). Multiparameter flow cytometric assay was used to detect changes in the expression of transcription factors characteristic of hES cells. We found that lovastatin treatment delayed NANOG downregulation during ectodermal and endodermal differentiation. Likewise,expression of ectodermal (SOX1 and OTX2) and endodermal (GATA4 and FOXA2) markers was higher in treated cells. Exposure of hES cells to lovastatin led to a minor decrease in the expression of SSEA-3 and a significant reduction in CD133 expression. Treated cells also formed fewer embryoid bodies than control cells. By analyzing hES with and without CD133,we discovered that CD133 expression is required for proper formation of embryoid bodies. In conclusion,lovastatin reduced the heterogeneity of hES cells and impaired their differentiation potential. View Publication

Mitochondrial disease is associated with a wide variety of clinical presentations,even among patients carrying heteroplasmic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations,probably because of variations in mutant mtDNA proportions at the tissue and organ levels. Although several case reports and clinical trials have assessed the effectiveness of various types of drugs and supplements for the treatment of mitochondrial diseases,there are currently no cures for these conditions. In this study,we demonstrated for the first time that low dose resveratrol (RSV) ameliorated mitochondrial respiratory dysfunction in patient-derived fibroblasts carrying homoplasmic mtDNA mutations. Furthermore,low dose RSV also facilitated efficient cellular reprogramming of the patient-derived fibroblasts into induced pluripotent stem cells,partly due to improved cellular viability. Our results highlight the potential of RSV as a new therapeutic drug candidate for the treatment of mitochondrial diseases. View Publication

The groundbreaking discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) provides a new source for cell therapy. However,whether the iPS derived functional lineages from different cell origins have different immunogenicity remains unknown. It had been known that the cells isolated from extra-embryonic tissues,such as umbilical cord mesenchymal cells (UMCs),are less immunogenic than other adult lineages such as skin fibroblasts (SFs). In this report,we differentiated iPS cells from human UMCs and SFs into neural progenitor cells (NPCs) and analyzed their immunogenicity. Through co-culture with allologous peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs),we showed that UMCs were indeed less immunogenic than skin cells to simulate proliferation of PBMCs. Surprisingly,we found that the NPCs differentiated from UMC-iPS cells retained low immunogenicity as the parental UMCs based on the PBMC proliferation assay. In cytotoxic expression assay,reactions in most kinds of immune effector cells showed more perforin and granzyme B expression with SF-NPCs stimulation than that with UMC-NPCs stimulation in PBMC co-culture system,in T cell co-culture system as well. Furthermore,through whole genome expression microarray analysis,we showed that over 70 immune genes,including all members of HLA-I,were expressed at lower levels in NPCs derived from UMC-iPS cells than that from SF-iPS cells. Our results demonstrated a phenomenon that the low immunogenicity of the less immunogenic cells could be retained after cell reprogramming and further differentiation,thus provide a new concept to generate functional lineages with lower immunogenicity for regenerative medicine. View Publication

Low oxygen (O(2)) levels characterize the microenvironment of both stem cells and rapidly growing tumors. Moreover,hypoxia is associated with the maintenance of stem cell-like phenotypes and increased invasion,angiogenesis and metastasis in cancer patients. Metastatic cancers,such as breast cancer and melanoma,aberrantly express the embryonic morphogen Nodal,and the presence of this protein is correlated with metastatic disease. In this paper,we demonstrate that hypoxia induces Nodal expression in melanoma and breast cancer cells concomitant with increased cellular invasion and angiogenic phenotypes. Of note,Nodal expression remains up-regulated up to 48 h following reoxygenation. The oxygen-mediated regulation of Nodal expression occurs via a combinatorial mechanism. Within the first 24 h of exposure to low O(2),there is an increase in protein stability. This increase in stability is accompanied by an induction of transcription,mediated by the HIF-1α-dependent activation of Notch-responsive elements in the node-specific enhancer of the Nodal gene locus. Finally,Nodal expression is maintained upon reoxygenation by a canonical SMAD-dependent feed-forward mechanism. This work provides insight into the O(2)-mediated regulation of Nodal,a key stem cell-associated factor,and reveals that Nodal may be a target for the treatment and prevention of hypoxia-induced tumor progression. View Publication

Stem cell leukemia/T cell acute leukemia 1 (SCL/TAL1) plays a key role in the development of murine primitive hematopoiesis but its functions in adult definitive hematopoiesis are still unclear. Using lentiviral delivery of TAL1-directed shRNA in human hematopoietic cells,we show that decreased expression of TAL1 induced major disorders at different levels of adult hematopoietic cell development. Erythroid and myeloid cell production in cultures was dramatically decreased in TAL1-directed shRNA-expressing cells,whereas lymphoid B-cell development was normal. These results confirm the role of TAL1 in the erythroid compartment and show TLA1's implication in the function of myeloid committed progenitors. Moreover,long-term cultures and transplantation of TAL1-directed shRNA-expressing CD34+ cells into irradiated nonobese diabetic-severe combined immunodeficient (NOD-SCID) mice led to dramatically low levels of human cells of all lineages including the B-lymphoid lineage,strongly suggesting that TAL1 has a role in the early commitment of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in humans. Cultures and transplantation experiments performed with mouse Sca1+ cells gave identical results. Altogether,these observations definitively show that TAL1 participates in the regulation of hematopoiesis from HSCs to myeloid progenitors,and pinpoint TAL1 as a master protein of human and murine adult hematopoiesis. View Publication

We demonstrate that dissociated human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) are intrinsically programmed to form lumens. PSCs form two-cell cysts with a shared apical domain within 20 hr of plating; these cysts collapse to form monolayers after 5 days. Expression of pluripotency markers is maintained throughout this time. In two-cell cysts,an apical domain,marked by EZRIN and atypical PKC$\$,is surrounded by apically targeted organelles (early endosomes and Golgi). Molecularly,actin polymerization,regulated by ARP2/3 and mammalian diaphanous-related formin 1 (MDIA),promotes lumen formation,whereas actin contraction,mediated by MYOSIN-II,inhibits this process. Finally,we show that lumenal shape can be manipulated in bioengineered micro-wells. Since lumen formation is an indispensable step in early mammalian development,this system can provide a powerful model for investigation of this process in a controlled environment. Overall,our data establish that lumenogenesis is a fundamental cell biological property of human PSCs. View Publication

Germ line mutations in the Adenomatous polyposis coli tumor suppressor gene cause a hereditary form of intestinal tumorigenesis in both mice and man. Here we show that in Apc(Min/+) mice,which carry a heterozygous germ line mutation at codon 850 of Apc,there is progressive loss of immature and mature thymocytes from approximately 80 days of age with complete regression of the thymus by 120 days. In addition,Apc(Min/+) mice show parallel depletion of splenic natural killer (NK) cells,immature B cells,and B progenitor cells in bone marrow due to complete loss of interleukin 7 (IL-7)-dependent B-cell progenitors. Using bone marrow transplantation experiments into wild-type recipients,we have shown that the capacity of transplanted Apc(Min/+) bone marrow cells for T- and B-cell development appears normal. In contrast,although the Apc(Min/+) bone marrow microenvironment supported short-term reconstitution with wild-type bone marrow,Apc(Min/+) animals that received transplants subsequently underwent lymphodepletion. Fibroblast colony-forming unit (CFU-F) colony assays revealed a significant reduction in colony-forming mesenchymal progenitor cells in the bone marrow of Apc(Min/+) mice compared with wild-type animals prior to the onset of lymphodepletion. This suggests that an altered bone marrow microenvironment may account for the selective lymphocyte depletion observed in this model of familial adenomatous polyposis. View Publication