Simultaneous maintenance of human cord blood SCID-repopulating cells and expansion of committed progenitors at low O2 concentration (3%)

In the present work, we tested the hypothesis that liquid cultures (LCs) of cord blood CD34(+) cells at an appropriate low O-2 concentration could simultaneously allow colony-forming cell (CFC) expansion and nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficiency mice-repopulating cell (SRC) maintenance. We first found that 3% was the minimal O-2 concentration, still allowing the same rate of CFC expansion as at 20% O-2. We report here that 7-day LCs of cord blood CD34(+) cells at 3% O-2 maintain SRC better than at 20% O-2 and allow a similar amplification of CFCs (35- to 50-fold) without modifying the CD34(+) cell proliferation. Their phenotypic profile (antigens: HLA-DR, CD117, CD33, CD13, CD11b, CD14, CD15, and CD38) was not modified, with exception of CD133, whose expression was lower at 3% O-2. These results suggest that low O-2 concentrations similar to those found in bone marrow participates in the regulation of hematopoiesis by favoring stem cell-renewing divisions. This expansion method that avoids stem cell exhaustion could be of paramount interest in hematopoietic transplantation by allowing the use of small-size grafts in adults.