Cotransplantation of third-party mesenchymal stromal cells can alleviate single-donor predominance and increase engraftment from double cord transplantation.
Although the infusion of umbilical cord blood (UCB) from multiple donors can be a strategy to overcome the cell dose limitation frequently encountered in UCB transplantation, clinical trials have revealed that cells from one donor dominate engraftment. To investigate the origin of and the factors influencing this inequality, we performed mixed transplantation of 2 UCB units with varying degrees of HLA disparities into NOD/SCID mice and determined donor origins by polymerase chain reaction-sequence-specific oligonucleotide probe (PCR-SSOP) or real-time quantitative (RQ)-PCR for human short tandem repeats (STRs). When total mononuclear cells from 2 units were transplanted as a mixture, cells from one donor predominated (ratio, 81:19), despite comparable overall engraftment when infused as single units, and no augmentation in overall engraftment was observed when compared with the single-unit controls. However, lineage depletion or cotransplantation of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) expanded from third-party bone marrow resulted in more balanced coengraftment. Direct comparison of double UCB transplantation in the presence or absence of MSCs showed that the reduced deviation in the donor ratio (1.8:1 vs. 2.8:1) correlated with a higher overall level of engraftment with MSC cotransplantation. These results indicate that third-party MSCs can be used to alleviate donor deviation and to facilitate engraftment of multidonor UCB.
Kim
Dong-Wook
DW
Cell and Gene Therapy Institute and the Department of Cellular Medicine and Biology, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea.
Chung
Yang-Jo
YJ
Kim
Tai-Gyu
TG
Kim
Yoo-Li
YL
Oh
Il-Hoan
IH
D000818:Animals; D001803:Blood Transfusion; D019070:Cell Lineage; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D036101:Cord Blood Stem Cell Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D005312:Fetal Blood / Q000166:cytology*; D006680:HLA Antigens / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D007963:Leukocytes, Mononuclear / Q000166:cytology; D008648:Mesoderm / Q000166:cytology*; D051379:Mice; D016688:Mice, Inbred NOD; D016513:Mice, SCID; D008954:Models, Biological; D009368:Neoplasm Transplantation; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017154:Stromal Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D020080:Tandem Repeat Sequences; D014471:Umbilical Veins / Q000166:cytology*
D006680:HLA Antigens