Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor directly acts on mouse lymphoid-biased but not myeloid-biased hematopoietic stem cells

Haematologica. 2021 Jun 1;106(6):1647-1658. doi: 10.3324/haematol.2019.239251.

Abstract

Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) is widely used in clinical settings to mobilize hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) into the circulation for HSC harvesting and transplantation. However, whether G-CSF directly stimulates HSCs to change their cell cycle state and fate is controversial. HSCs are a heterogeneous population consisting of different types of HSCs, such as myeloid-biased HSCs and lymphoid-biased HSCs. We hypothesized that G-CSF has different effects on different types of HSCs. To verify this, we performed serum-free single-cell culture and competitive repopulation with cultured cells. Single highly purified HSCs and hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) were cultured with stem cell factor (SCF), SCF + G-CSF, SCF + granulocyte/macrophage (GM)-CSF, or SCF + thrombopoietin (TPO) for 7 days. Compared with SCF alone, SCF + G-CSF increased the number of divisions of cells from the lymphoid-biased HSC-enriched population but not that of cells from the My-bi HSC-enriched population. SCF + G-CSF enhanced the level of reconstitution of lymphoid-biased HSCs but not that of myeloid-biased HSCs. Clonal transplantation assay also showed that SCF + G-CSF did not increase the frequency of myeloid-biased HSCs. These data showed that G-CSF directly acted on lymphoid-biased HSCs but not myeloid-biased HSCs. Our study also revised the cytokine network at early stages of hematopoiesis: SCF directly acted on myeloid-biased HSCs; TPO directly acted on myeloid-biased HSCs and lymphoid-biased HSCs; and GM-CSF acted only on HPCs. Early hematopoiesis is controlled differentially and sequentially by a number of cytokines.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Cells, Cultured
  • Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor* / pharmacology
  • Hematopoiesis
  • Hematopoietic Stem Cells*
  • Mice
  • Stem Cell Factor / pharmacology
  • Thrombopoietin / pharmacology

Substances

  • Stem Cell Factor
  • Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor
  • Thrombopoietin

Grants and funding

Funding This work was supported by grants from the National Key Research and Development Program of China Stem Cell and Translational Research (2016YFA0100600, 2017YFA0104900, and 2019YFA0110203), CAMS Initiative for Innovative Medicine (CAMS-I2M) (2016-I2M-1-017 and 2017-I2M-1-015), CAMS Fundamental Research Funds for Central Research Institutes (2019PT320017), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81670105, 81970119, 81670106, 81421002).