Novel Methodological Approaches in Assessment and Enrichment of Stem Cell Population

Nadja M. Bilko, Boris Fehse, Wolfram Ostertag, Carol Stocking, Axel R. Zander 

Stem Cells and their Potential for Clinical Application, 2008   201-210    DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-6469-2_15

 

Development of the long-term models of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) cultures and investigation of cell interactions are the important tasks in modern biotechnology.

Strategies of hematopoietic progenitor cell expansion in the past decades have made considerable progress. Successful ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic and progenitor cells could be implemented for a variety of clinical applications. Increasing cells numbers of HSC is of a great benefit for transplantation purposes or genetic modification. However, ex vivo HSC expansion for clinical applications encounters many difficulties.

It is suggested, that stromal presence is important for hematopoiesis alongside with cytokines in vitro and in vivo, but the question remains: whether diffusible factors produced by stromal cells are sufficient for the regeneration of primitive hematopoietic cells, or whether direct cell-to-cell contacts would be required.