The intermediate filament protein Nestin labels populations of stem/progenitor cells, including self-renewing mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), a major constituent of the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) niche. However, the intracellular location of Nestin prevents its use for prospective live cell isolation. Hence it is important to find surface markers specific for Nestin
+ cells. In this study, we show that the expression of PDGFRα and CD51 among CD45
− Ter119
− CD31
− mouse bone marrow (BM) stromal cells characterizes a large fraction of Nestin
+ cells, containing most fibroblastic CFUs, mesenspheres, and self-renewal capacity after transplantation. The PDGFRα
+ CD51
+ subset of Nestin
+ cells is also enriched in major HSC maintenance genes, supporting the notion that niche activity co-segregates with MSC activity. Furthermore, we show that PDGFRα
+ CD51
+ cells in the human fetal BM represent a small subset of CD146
+ cells expressing Nestin and enriched for MSC and HSC niche activities. Importantly, cultured human PDGFRα
+ CD51
+ nonadherent mesenspheres can significantly expand multipotent hematopoietic progenitors able to engraft immunodeficient mice. These results thus indicate that the HSC niche is conserved between the murine and human species and suggest that highly purified nonadherent cultures of niche cells may represent a useful novel technology to culture human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells.Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) continuously replenish all blood cell lineages throughout their lifetime. Incipient hematopoiesis is first detected extraembryonically in the yolk sac and later in the aorta–gonad–mesonephros region, from where it moves transiently to the placenta and liver before being stabilized in the fetal BM (
Wang and Wagers, 2011). In the adult stage, HSCs reside in a highly complex and dynamic microenvironment of the BM commonly referred to as the HSC niche (
Schofield, 1978). The interactions between the niche constituents and HSCs ensure hematopoietic homeostasis by regulating HSC self-renewal, differentiation, and migration and by integrating neural and hormonal signals from the periphery (
Méndez-Ferrer et al., 2009,
2010;
Mercier et al., 2012). However, HSC maintenance and expansion ex vivo still remains challenging mainly because of our limited knowledge on the in vivo HSC niche constituents and the factors that drive HSC self-renewal.Although the cellular constituents of the HSC niche and their role are still poorly understood, in the last decade, several putative cellular components of the murine HSC niche have been proposed, including osteoblastic, endothelial, adipocytic, and perivascular cells (
Calvi et al., 2003;
Zhang et al., 2003;
Arai et al., 2004;
Kiel et al., 2005;
Sugiyama et al., 2006;
Chan et al., 2009;
Naveiras et al., 2009;
Méndez-Ferrer et al., 2010;
Ding et al., 2012). Multipotent BM mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have long been suggested to also provide regulatory signals to hematopoietic progenitors, as mixed cultures derived from the adherent fraction of the BM stroma promote the maintenance of HSCs in vitro (
Dexter et al., 1977). Although numerous studies explored the ability of mesenchymal stromal cultures to support the ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs), currently these systems are still insufficient to preserve primitive HSCs with long-term multilineage engraftment capacity (
Chou et al., 2010;
Broxmeyer, 2011). This limitation may in part be associated with the heterogeneous composition of mesenchymal stromal cell cultures. The prospective identification and functional characterization of purified naive populations of mouse and/or human BM stromal MSCs have been mired by the absence of specific cell surface markers allowing prospective isolation. Several MSC-associated antigens have been proposed (such as CD31
− CD34
− CD45
− CD105
+ CD90
+ CD73
+) in cultured cells (
Dominici et al., 2006). Nevertheless, these markers are not homogeneously expressed across cultures, varying with isolation protocols and passage and therefore not necessarily representative of MSCs in vivo (
Bianco et al., 2013;
Frenette et al., 2013). Very few MSC-associated antigens have been validated using rigorous transplantation assays (
Sacchetti et al., 2007;
Méndez-Ferrer et al., 2010). In the mouse BM, the expression of the intermediate filament protein Nestin characterizes a rare population of multipotent MSCs in close contact with the vasculature and HSCs. Nestin
+ stromal cells contain all of the fibroblastic CFU (CFU-F) activity within the mouse BM and the exclusive capacity to form clonal nonadherent spheres in culture. The selective ablation of mouse Nestin
+ cells (
Méndez-Ferrer et al., 2010) or CXCL12-abundant reticular (CAR) cells (
Omatsu et al., 2010) led to significant alterations in the BM HSC and progenitor maintenance. Serial transplantation analyses revealed that Nestin
+ cells are able to self-renew and generate hematopoietic activity in heterotopic bone ossicle assays (
Méndez-Ferrer et al., 2010). This potential was also associated with a CD45
− Tie2
− αV
+ CD105
+ CD90
− subset from the fetal mouse bone (
Chan et al., 2009). In the adult mouse BM, PDGFRα
+ Sca1
+ CD45
− Ter119
− cells were also shown capable to give rise to osteoblasts, reticular cells, and adipocytes in vivo upon transplantation into irradiated mice (
Morikawa et al., 2009). However, human BM MSCs are still retrospectively isolated based on plastic adherence (
Friedenstein et al., 1970;
Pittenger et al., 1999). Human CD45
− CD146
+ self-renewing osteoprogenitors isolated from stromal cultures containing all the human BM CFU-F activity were shown capable of generating a heterotopic BM niche in an s.c. transplantation model (
Sacchetti et al., 2007). However, a recent study showed that human CD45
− CD271
+ CD146
−/low BM cells also possess these capacities (
Tormin et al., 2011).Because Nestin is an intracellular protein, its identification in nontransgenic mice requires cell permeabilization, which precludes prospective isolation of live cells. In this study, we have evaluated putative cell surface MSC markers to identify a stromal population equivalent to Nestin
+ cells in the mouse and human BM. Our results show that the combination of PDGFRα and CD51 identify a large subset of perivascular Nestin
+ cells that is highly enriched in MSC and HSC niche activities in both species. Furthermore, we show that PDGFRα
+ CD51
+ stromal cells isolated from human BM can also form self-renewing clonal mesenspheres capable of transferring hematopoietic niche activity in vivo and support the ex vivo maintenance and expansion of human HSPCs in a dose-dependent manner.
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