Haemopoietic cell growth factors are normally assayed using unfractionated marrow cells (NBM). However, using this population it is difficult to distinguish between direct versus indirect effects, because of the low incidence of colony forming cells (CFC) and the presence of possible accessory cells (which may themselves be acted upon by the growth factors and stimulated to produce other growth...

The generation of lymphoid cells in mice depends on the function of the Ikaros protein. Ikaros has been characterized as a lymphoid-restricted, zinc-finger transcription factor that is derived from an alternatively spliced message. Ikaros knockout mice have defects in multiple cell lineages, raising the question of whether the protein regulates multiple committed progenitors and/or multipotent ...

Populations of hematopoietic stem cells and progenitors are quite heterogeneous and consist of multiple cell subsets with distinct phenotypic and functional characteristics. Some of these subsets also appear to be interconvertible and oscillate between functionally distinct states. The multipotent hematopoietic cell line EML has emerged as a unique model to study the heterogeneity and interconv...

The success of haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation largely depends on numbers of transplanted HSCs, which reside in the CD34(+) populations of bone marrow (BM), peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) and umbilical cord blood (UCB). More specifically HSCs reside in the CD38(low/-) subpopulation, which cannot be objectively discriminated from mature CD34(+)  CD38(+) progenitors. Thus, bett...

Stem cells are self-renewing cells that can differentiate into specialized cell type(s). Pluripotent stem cells, i.e. embryonic stem cells (ESC) or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) differentiate into cells of all three embryonic lineages. Multipotent stem cells, like hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), can develop into multiple specialized cells in a specific tissue. Unipotent cells differenti...

Infections and inflammation trigger neutrophilias that are supported by a hematopoietic program of accelerated granulopoiesis known as emergency granulopoiesis. The intrinsic factors that drive reactive neutrophilias and emergency granulopoiesis have been inferred but not demonstrated. Here, we show that alum cannot elicit reactive neutrophilias in IL-1R type I (IL-1RI)(-/-) mice, whereas other...

Rationale: TBX1 encodes a T-box transcription factor implicated in DiGeorge syndrome, which affects the development of many organs, including the heart. Loss of Tbx1 results into hypoplasia of heart regions derived from the second heart field, a population of cardiac progenitors cells (CPCs). Thus, we hypothesized that Tbx1 is an important player in the biology of CPCs. Objective: We asked whet...

Hematopoiesis is tightly controlled by transcription regulatory networks, but how and when specific transcription factors control lineage commitment are still largely unknown. Within the hematopoietic stem cell (Lin(-)Sca-1(+)c-Kit(+)) compartment these lineage-specific transcription factors are expressed at low levels but are up-regulated with the process of lineage specification. CCAAT/enhanc...

This study compares mesenchymal cells isolated from excised burn wound eschar with adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) and dermal fibroblasts in their ability to conform to the requirements for multipotent mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). A population of multipotent stem cells in burn eschar could be an interesting resource for tissue engineering approaches to heal burn wounds. Cells from burn esc...

In the vertebrate embryo, the cephalic neural crest cells (CNCCs) produce cells belonging to two main lineages: the neural [including neurons, glial cells of the peripheral nervous system (PNS), and melanocytes] and the mesenchymal (chondrocytes, osteoblasts, smooth muscle cells, and connective tissue cells), whereas the trunk NCCs (TNCCs) in amniotes yield only neural derivatives. Although mul...