Human Olfactory Mucosa Multipotent Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Promote Survival, Proliferation, and Differentiation of Human Hematopoietic Cells

Multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) from the human olfactory mucosa (OM) are cells that have been proposed as a niche for neural progenitors. OM-MSCs share phenotypic and functional properties with bone marrow (BM) MSCs, which constitute fundamental components of the hematopoietic niche. In this work, we investigated whether human OM-MSCs may promote the survival, proliferation, and differentiation of human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). For this purpose, human bone marrow cells (BMCs) were co-cultured with OM-MSCs in the absence of exogenous cytokines. At different intervals, nonadherent cells (NACs) were harvested from BMC/OM-MSC co-cultures, and examined for the expression of blood cell markers by flow cytometry. OM-MSCs supported the survival (cell viability >90%) and proliferation of BMCs, after 54 days of co-culture. At 20 days of co-culture, flow cytometric and microscopic analyses showed a high percentage (73%) of cells expressing the pan-leukocyte marker CD45, and the presence of cells...