title: CD90 and CD110 correlate with cancer stem cell potentials in human T-acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells.
abstract: Although cancer stem cells (CSCs) have been recently identified in myeloid leukemia, published data on lymphoid malignancy have been sparse. T-acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is characterized by the abnormal proliferation of T-cell precursors and is generally aggressive. As CD34 is the only positive-selection marker for CSCs in T-ALL, we performed extensive analysis of CD markers in T-ALL cell lines. We found that some of the tested lines consisted of heterogeneous populations of cells with various levels of surface marker expression. In particular, a small subpopulation of CD90 (Thy-1) and CD110 (c-Mpl) were shown to correlate with stem cell properties both in vitro and in transplantation experiments. As these markers are expressed on hematopoietic stem cells, our results suggest that stem cell-like population are enriched in CD90+/CD110+ fraction and they are useful positive-selection markers for the isolation of CSCs in some cases of T-ALL.
authors.affiliation: Division of Clinical Immunology, Advanced Clinical Research Center, Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiroto
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yamazaki
authors.forename: Hiroko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nishida
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Iwata
authors.forename: Nam H
authors.initials: NH
authors.lastname: Dang
authors.forename: Chikao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Morimoto