Preferential adhesion of fetal liver derived primitive haemopoietic progenitor cells to bone marrow stroma

The orderly transfer of haemopoiesis from the fetal liver to the medullary cavities during the ontogeny may result from a decrease in the capacity of the fetal liver to support haemopoiesis. Alternatively it could be facilitated by the preferential migration of primitive haemopoietic cells to the marrow. In this study we have compared the ability of high proliferative potential colony forming cells (HPP-CFC) derived from murine fetal liver (FL) on the 15th day of gestation and from murine adult bone marrow (BM) to adhere to either FL or BM derived stromal layers. Adhesion of FL HPP-CFC to bone marrow stromal layers was significantly greater than all other combinations tested. The remarkable affinity of HPP-CFC derived from FL for BM stromal layers is consistent with the preferential migration of haemopoietic cells from the fetal liver to the medullary cavities.