Short‐Term exposure of umbilical cord blood CD34+ cells to human platelet lysate and cytokines enhances engraftment

Background Intra bone marrow (IBM) injection has been proposed as a strategy to bypass homing inefficiencies associated with intravenous (IV) hematopoietic progenitor stem cell (HSPC) transplantation and thus increases the number of HSPC that engraft. Despite physical delivery into the bone marrow cavity, many donor cells are rapidly redistributed by vascular perfusion. Thus, the objective of our study was to evaluate the ability of human platelet lysates (hPL) to improve HSPC retention into the bone marrow and consequently to improve engraftment. Study Design and Methods HSPC were isolated from human umbilical cord blood. HSPC were seeded in the wells of a 24‐well microplate and exposed to increasing concentrations of hPL with or without cytokines for 24 hours. Following priming, HSPC cells chemotaxis to rhSDF‐1 was determined in vitro and engraftment in NSG mice was evaluated. Results Priming of cord blood CD34+ cells to a combination of hPL and cytokines resulted in a significant increase (up to 3‐fold) in the expression of the CD34 antigen on HSPC. This effect was closely correlated to a significantly increased (up to 7‐fold) migration toward a rhSDF‐1 concentration gradient. In addition, IBM injection of CD34+ cells previously primed with hPL+cytokines into NSG mice showed significantly increased engraftment as measured by human platelet numbers, human CD45 and human CD34+ cells for unprimed and primed cells, respectively. Conclusion The use of hPL + cytokines as a short‐term priming treatment for UCB could be an advantageous strategy to improve clinical outcomes following IBM injection.