Defining Molecular Phenotypes of Mesenchymal and hematopoietic Stem Cells derived from Peripheral blood of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia patients for regenerative stem cell therapy

Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) is a clonal myeloid disorder affecting all age groups, characterized by accumulation of immature blast cells in bone marrow and in peripheral blood. Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation is a present treatment for cure of ALL patients, which is very expensive, invasive process and may have possibility of transplantation of malignant stem cells to patients. In the present study, we hypothesized to isolate large number of normal Mesenchymal & Hematopoietic stem cells from peripheral blood of ALL patients, which will be further characterized for their normal phenotypes by using specific molecular stem cell markers. This is the first study, which defines the existing phenotypes of isolated MSCs and HSCs from peripheral blood of ALL patients. We have established three cell lines in which two were Mesenchymal stem cells designated as MSC(ALL) and MSCns(ALL) and one was suspension cell line designated as HSC(ALL). The HSC(ALL) cell line was developed from the lymphocyte like cells secreted by MSC(ALL) cells. Our study also showed that MSC(ALL) from peripheral blood of ALL patient secreted hematopoietic stem cells in vitro culture. We have characterized all three-cell lines by 14 specific stem cell molecular markers. It was found that both MSC cell lines expressed CD105, CD13, and CD73 with mixed expression of CD34 and CD45 at early passage whereas, HSC(ALL) cell line expressed prominent feature of hematopoietic stem cells such as CD34 and CD45 with mild expression of CD105 and CD13. All three-cell lines expressed LIF, OCT4, NANOG, SOX2, IL6, and DAPK. These cells mildly expressed COX2 and did not express BCR-ABL. Overall it was shown that isolated MSCs and HSCs can be use as a model system to study the mechanism of leukemia at stem cell level and their use in stem cell regeneration therapy for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia.