The homeostasis of the hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell pool relies on a fine-tuned balance between self-renewal, differentiation and proliferation. Recent studies have proposed that mitochondria regulate these processes. Although recent work has contributed to understanding the role of mitochondria during stem cell differentiation, it remains unclear whether the mitochondrial content/functio...

Every day, billions of new blood cells are produced in the body, each one derived from a hematopoietic stem cell (HSC). Because most mature blood stem cells have a limited life span, the ability of HSCs to perpetuate themselves through self-renewal and generate new blood cells for the lifetime of an organism is critical to sustaining life. A key problem in hematopoietic stem cell biology is how...

In the adult, the source of functionally diverse, mature blood cells are hematopoietic stem cells, a rare population of quiescent cells that reside in the bone marrow niche. Like stem cells in other tissues, hematopoietic stem cells are defined by their ability to self-renew, in order to maintain the stem cell population for the lifetime of the organism, and to differentiate, in order to give r...

Hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy is potentially curative for a number of inherited and acquired disorders. However, poor gene transfer and expression in repopulating hematopoietic stem cells attenuate this potential. Here we review potential means of conferring a selective advantage to hematopoietic stem cells and their progeny, and discuss the issues that surround the use of selective adva...

BACKGROUND Sub-optimal levels of vitamin D have been found to be highly prevalent in all age groups, with epidemiologic studies demonstrating a link between vitamin D deficiency and disease susceptibility, such as infection and cancer, and mortality rates. In adult transplant patients, it has been suggested that the immunomodulatory properties of vitamin D may have an important role in the prev...

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation was first reported for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus in 1997. The procedure has since been performed worldwide including in Europe, in Brazil, and in China. A National Institutes of Health-funded phase III clinical trial of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for refractory systemic lupus erythematosus is anticipated to begin in 2003. Enc...

MicroRNAs influence hematopoietic differentiation, but little is known about their effects on the stem cell state. Here, we report that the microRNA processing enzyme Dicer is essential for stem cell persistence in vivo and a specific microRNA, miR-125a, controls the size of the stem cell population by regulating hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell (HSPC) apoptosis. Conditional deletion of Dicer...

• PGE2 signaling positively regulates hematopoietic stem cells both directly and via activation of a nonhematopoietic cell population. • EP4 is a major receptor for the PGE2-mediated regulation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) regulates hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell (HSPC) activity. However, the receptor(s) responsible for PGE2 signaling remains unclear. ...

The nature of hematopoietic stem cells under normal hematopoiesis remained largely unknown due to the limited assays available to monitor their behavior in situ. Here, we develop a new mouse model to transfer genes specifically into the primitive hematopoietic stem cell compartment through the utilization of a modified Rcas/TVA system. We succeeded in transferring a GFP reporter gene into adult...

Hematopoietic stem cells have typically been defined as pluripotent cells with self-renewal capacity. Recent studies have shown striking differences in the mean length of telomeric repeat sequences at the end of chromosomes from human hematopoietic cells at different stages of development. The most likely explanation for these observations is that hematopoietic stem cells, like all other somati...