Flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), synthesized from riboflavin, is redox cofactor in energy production and plays an important role in cell survival. More recently, riboflavin deficiency has been linked to developmental disorders, but its role in stem cell differentiation remains unclear. Here, we show that FAD treatment, using DMSO as a solvent, enabled an increase in the amount of intracellula...

Transplantable human hematopoietic stem cells (competitive repopulating units [CRU]) can be quantitated based on their ability to produce large populations of lymphoid and myeloid progeny within 6 weeks in the marrow of intravenously injected, sublethally irradiated NOD/SCID mice. It is shown that the proportions of total injected human fetal liver and cord blood CRU in the marrow of mice 24 ho...

Abbreviations: GMP: Good Manufacturing Practice; BM: Bone Marrow; HSC: Hematopoietic Stem Cells; MSC: Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells; HCT: Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation; NK: Natural Killer; NOD/SCID: Non-Obese Diabetic/Severe Combined Immunodeficient mice; aGVHD: acute Graft Versus Host Disease; LTCG: Laboratory of Cell and Gene Therapy; EBMT: European group for Blood and Marrow Transplant...

Pluripotent hematopoietic progenitor cells (CFU-GEMM), myeloid progenitor cells (CFU-GM), and erythroid progenitors (BFU-E) were studied in midtrimester human fetuses using the mixed colony assay. All three progenitor cell populations were detected at high levels in the fetal liver from 12 to 23 wk of gestation. Stem cells were first observed in the bone marrow at 15-16 wk of gestation, althoug...

In utero transplantation (IUT) is becoming a viable option for the treatment of various immune and metabolic disorders diagnosed early in gestation. In this study, donor fetal liver cells had a 10-fold competitive engraftment advantage relative to adult bone marrow in allogeneic fetal severe combined immunodeficient (SCID) recipients compared with adult recipients. In contrast, adult bone marro...

Early fetal and placental MSCs have translationally-advantageous characteristics compared to later pregnancy MSCs. During the first trimester, the fetus and placenta grow rapidly with divergent developmental requirements, but studies comparing mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from different origins have paid little attention to the effect of gestational age over this temporal window. Here we prese...

There is substantial evidence for limited proliferative capacity of the hematopoietic progenitors. Hematopoiesis in mice is maintained by primitive stem cells that are assayed by their ability to form spleen colonies (CFU-S). To measure the average proliferative capacity of these cells (CFU-S). bone marrow containing 50-1 50 CFU-S is injected into lethally irradiated mice. and 14 days later. th...

Recently, the ligand for c-mpl has been identified and cloned. Initial studies of this molecule indicate that it is the platelet regulatory factor, thrombopoietin (TPO). Previous work has indicated that c-mpl is expressed in very immature hematopoietic precursors and thus raised the possibility that TPO may act directly on the hematopoietic stem cell. Therefore, in these studies, we investigate...

Huntington's disease (HD) is a fatal genetic disorder, which causes the progressive breakdown of neurons in the human brain. HD deteriorates human physical and mental abilities over time and has no cure. Stem cell-based technologies are promising novel treatments, and in HD, they aim to replace lost neurons and/or to prevent neural cell death. Herein we discuss the use of human fetal tissue (hF...

Mammalian aging results from a replicative decline in the function of somatic stem cells and other self-renewing cells. Recent studies (Monzen et al., 2008; Nishino et al., 2008; Sanna et al., 2008; Weedon et al., 2008) link a chromatin-associated protein, HMGA2, to development, height, and mouse stem cell aging during late fetal development and young adulthood.